Tasmania University Cricket Club

Latest News (12th. March 2004)

‘Lurch’ runner-up in national Johnny Walker Progress Award.




Nathan King joined our club when his family moved from Burnie to live in Hobart when he was 15 years old.

We were immediately impressed with his obvious ability as an aggressive left-handed opening batsman and right arm medium pace bowler. His friendly and outgoing nature soon won him many friends within the club.

In the 1998/99 season Nathan scored 200 runs in an innings against Lindisfarne in the Tasmanian Cricket Association Under 17 competition. He was also doing well in his studies and in 2001 commenced studying at the University of Tasmania.

The start of the 2001/2002 season was an exciting time for Nathan as he was about to sit his first-year University final exams, he was cementing his spot in our club’s first grade team and he was training hard in the Tasmanian Under 19 squad and was considered a certainty to be picked in that team.

In November 2001 Nathan was driving home after training on a Tuesday night when a car swerved on to his side of the road and hit his car head-on. This serious car accident almost claimed Nathan’s life. He was unconscious for a number of days and came very close to death on a number of occasions. When he eventually regained consciousness one of his first requests was to see some of his teammates.

Nathan had serious internal injuries, countless broken bones and smashed joints and had to have many pins and plates inserted in his body. He could not move at all for 6 weeks and spent three and a half months in hospital.

Many of our club’s players and support staff spent time with him in hospital and it was a real sense of relief for the club when Nathan was able to drop in to one of our matches later in that season. He was on crutches as his left knee had been completely smashed and the doctors were unsure if he could ever walk again properly, let alone run.

Slowly Nathan began to retain some of his strength. Even so, he was not strong enough and could not move well enough on his left knee to play cricket the next season. He deferred his University studies and started work as a Game Development Officer with the Tasmanian Cricket Association. Against all conventional wisdom, Nathan still believed he could play cricket again. The dream of playing cricket seemed unattainable but the will to play burned strongly within him.

At the start of the 2002/2003 season Nathan amazed everyone when he started training for the club. He was picked to play third grade and took a bag of wickets bowling off a short run-up. Just to be playing cricket again was a real thrill for Nathan and for the club. However, he was tormented by the fact that he could not perform at the level he wanted to because of his injuries. In some ways he lost the desire to play because he wanted to play with his mates in first grade but his body could not do what his mind visualized.

This could have easily been the end Nathan’s cricket career but he decided to work hard at his fitness and hone his technique over the off-season. He had to muster all of the self-belief and will power he could to achieve his goals.

When this season started it was obvious to everyone that Nathan should be selected to play first grade cricket for the club again. He had overcome insurmountable odds and he was ready to play top-flight cricket again.


To date this season Nathan has scored 323 runs at an average of 26.92 opening the innings in first grade. No one would have thought this would ever have been possible 2 years ago. He has made astounding progress in this time and we believed he would be a very deserving national winner of the Johnny Walker Progress Award.

Recently, on the SKY SPORTS cricket show the winners of the national Johnny Walker Progress were announced. A panel consisting of Alan Border, Shane Lee and Michael Slater was appointed to select the winners. A young Asian cricketer from South Australia won the award and our favourite son, ‘Lurch’ was the runner up. Congratulations to Nathan for winning the club award and for winning the national runners-up award.


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