Almost a decade after retiring from first-class cricket, spinner Brad Young is in the frame to make his Big Bash League debut with the Adelaide Strikers.
Young, who played six one-day internationals for Australia in 1998-99, has been named in the Strikers' 13-man squad to host Sydney Sixers in Adelaide on Sunday.
Just two months shy of his 40th birthday, Young has replaced paceman Gary Putland.
Young's first-class career finished in 2003 and the left-arm tweaker was not even playing in Adelaide's grade ranks when signed by Strikers coach Darren Berry.
Young was playing in the Adelaide Turf competition when given the final spot on the Strikers' roster, with Berry encouraged by the spinner's training form.
"Better than we expected, to be perfectly honest," Berry said on Saturday of Young's return.
"Throughout the trials we were undecided between he and Mark Higgs, and Young took the prize.
"If we play three spinners, I have got no hesitation that he will do a job.
"He is still fit, he can still whack it a little bit too with the bat in the lower order.
"And he is one of those left-arm orthodox spinners not dissimilar to an Aaron O'Brien that bowls at the base of the stumps and uses his pace quite well.
"He will play in this tournament."
Young was summoned at the expense of Putland, rested with what Berry termed "general soreness".
"He (Putland) has had a fairly big workload leading into the Big Bash," Berry said.
"He has got a few niggles, nothing that will keep him out for too long."
AAP
Tags: twenty20, cricket, sport, adelaide-5000, sa, australia First posted December 22, 2012 14:50:56