Melanie Jones (born 11 August 1972,

Barnstaple Barnstaple ( or ) is a river-port town in North Devon, England, at the River Taw's lowest crossing point before the Bristol Channel. From the 14th century, it was licensed to export wool and won great wealth. Later it imported Irish wool, bu ...

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

) is an English-born Australian cricket commentator and former

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

er who represented

Australia women's national cricket team The Australian women's national cricket team (formerly also known as the Southern Stars) represent Australia in international women's cricket. Currently captained by Meg Lanning and coached by Shelley Nitschke, they are the top team in all wor ...

Early life

Jones was born in

and moved with her mother to

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

when she was three months old. Her father, a

West Indian A West Indian is a native or inhabitant of the West Indies (the Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago). For more than 100 years the words ''West Indian'' specifically described natives of the West Indies, but by 1661 Europeans had begun to use it ...

, stayed back in England and she did not meet him until the age of 16. However, he had a big influence on her early life, particularly in attracting her to cricket. She was introduced to cricket by her high school geography teacher (the father of Australian Test player

Peter Handscomb Peter Stephen Patrick Handscomb (born 26 April 1991) is an Australian cricketer who is the current captain for the Victoria cricket team. He plays as a middle-order batsman and occasional wicketkeeper. Handscomb has played for Australia in Te ...

Playing career

A right-handed batter and occasional right-arm

medium Medium may refer to: Science and technology Aviation *Medium bomber, a class of war plane *Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design Communication * Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data * Medium of ...

pace bowler, she played 5 Test matches for

between 1998 and 2003, scoring 251 runs, highlighted by a 131 on debut against England in August 1998. Jones was the 134th woman to play Test cricket for Australia. She has also played 61

One Day International A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World C ...

s for Australia, scoring 1028 runs with an average in the low-twenties. Jones played

limited overs cricket Limited overs cricket, also known as one-day cricket or white ball cricket, is a version of the sport of cricket in which a match is generally completed in one day. There are a number of formats, including List A cricket (8-hour games), Twenty ...

in England for the now defunct

Lancashire and Cheshire Women cricket team The Lancashire and Cheshire Women's cricket team was the women's representative cricket team for the historic counties of Lancashire and Cheshire. They competed in the Women's Area Championship from 1980 to 1996 and in the Women's County Cham ...

between 1994 and 1997 and the Surrey County women's cricket team between 2003 and 2004. She played 122 games for the

Victorian Spirit The Victoria Women cricket team, previously known as Victorian Spirit, is the women's representative cricket team for the Australian State of Victoria. They play their home games at Junction Oval, St Kilda, Melbourne. They compete in the Wome ...

in the Australian

Women's National Cricket League The Women's National Cricket League (WNCL) is the national domestic 50-over competition for women's cricket in Australia. Featuring seven teams—one from every state, plus the Australian Capital Territory—each season's winner is awarded the ...

, and then five

Women's Twenty20 cricket Women's Twenty20 is the use of the Twenty20 match format in women's cricket. In a Twenty20 match, the two teams bat for a single innings each, of a maximum of 20 overs. The wider rules and playing conditions are usually the same for both the ...

games for the

Tasmanian Roar The Tasmania Women cricket team, also known as Tasmanian Tigers and previously Tasmanian Roar, is the women's representative cricket team for the Australian State of Tasmania. They play their home games at Blundstone Arena, Hobart. They compe ...

Commentary career

Cricket Australia Cricket Australia (CA), formerly known as the Australian Cricket Board (ACB), is the governing body for professional and amateur cricket in Australia. It was originally formed in 1905 as the 'Australian Board of Control for International Crick ...

put Jones' name forward in 2007 to commentate on the women's

Twenty20 Twenty20 (T20) is a shortened game format of cricket. At the professional level, it was introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003 for the inter-county competition. In a Twenty20 game, the two teams have a single innin ...

international, covered by Australia's Channel 9. Since then, Jones has commentated on women's internationals covered by Channel 9, as well as providing commentary for men's and women's games on ABC Radio. In 2015, Jones was announced as one of four female commentators to commentate on the 2015 Indian Premier League. Later in 2015, Jones joined the Channel 10 coverage of inaugural season of the

Women's Big Bash League The Women's Big Bash League (known as the WBBL and, for sponsorship reasons, the Weber WBBL) is the Australian women's domestic Twenty20 cricket competition. The WBBL replaced the Australian Women's Twenty20 Cup, which ran from the 2007–08 ...

, and also provided boundary commentary during the 2015-16 Big Bash League, along with boundary commentary for

Pakistan Super League 2017 The 2017 Pakistan Super League (also known as PSL 2 or, for sponsorship reasons, HBL PSL 2017), was the second season of the Pakistan Super League, a franchise Twenty20 cricket league established by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) in 2016. On ...

. She also lent her voice to the Ashes Cricket 17 game. In May 2018, she signed with Fox Sports. During the 2020/2021 summer of cricket, She commentated the WBBL and Women's International Cricket with Channel 7

Personal life

Outside of cricket, Jones works for a sports management company. Jones has worked as an ambassador with Australian charity, Red Dust, which promotes health initiatives in remote Aboriginal communities. In 2017 Jones was inducted to the

Victorian Honour Roll of Women The Victorian Honour Roll of Women was established in 2001 to recognise the achievements of women from the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victoria (Australia), Victoria. The Honour Roll was established as part of the cele ...

, while in the

2019 Australia Day Honours The 2019 Australia Day Honours are appointments Australian honours system, to various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by Australian citizens. The list was announced on 26 January 2019 by the Governor General of Australia, Pet ...

, Jones was awarded the

Order of Australia Medal The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Gove ...

, for services to cricket and the community.

References

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