Michael Bevan

Michael Gwyl Bevan is a former Australian left-handed cricket batsman and a slow left arm chinaman bowler. He was an AIS Australian Cricket Academy scholarship holder in 1989.

He played 232 ODI matches for Australia, and was a part of the 1999 and 2003 teams that won the World Cup. He was known as a "finisher" for Australia, particularly in ODIs, often leading the team to victory in the company of tail-enders.

He holds the world record One Day International batting average for retired players of 53.58. In List A cricket as a whole, Bevan has an average of over 58; the highest of any player to have scored 10,000 runs in List games. Although Bevan played most of his domestic career for the New South Wales Blues, he moved to the Tasmanian Tigers for the 2004–05 season, where he continued his successes up until his retirement in January 2007. He has also played for South Australia and in England for Yorkshire, Leicestershire and Sussex. Michael Bevan's first senior club was Weston Creek Cricket Club in Canberra.

Bevan enjoyed a promising start to his Test career with 82 in his debut innings and another two half-centuries in his first series against Pakistan in 1994-95, but he managed only a stop-start four-year campaign and was hindered by an inability to play the short ball at the highest level, which was strange as he had few problems with it in Australian or English domestic cricket. He never made a century, although he was twice unbeaten in the 80s when batting down the order and running out of partners against West Indies, who he upset with 15 wickets in the 1997-98 series. After that his Test career slid, but while he lost his baggy green he worked on making unforgettable memories in the green and gold one-day uniform, finishing with 232 appearances and a phenomenal average of 53.58 that was boosted by six centuries, 46 fifties and 67 not outs.

Born in Canberra, Bevan made his first-class debut in 1989-90 in South Australian colours, hitting a thrilling century in his first innings, before the completion of a 12-month stint at the Academy led to a move back to New South Wales. It was in Sydney that he began to make his greatest strides as a player, quickly assuming a regular middle-order berth in the strongest state team in the country and, aside from a poor run in 1992-93 which resulted in a brief omission, using it as a launching pad to the national team.