Simon O'Donnell

This led to him being recruited for senior football by the St Kilda Football Club, where his father Kevin had played 49 games on a forward flank in the 1940s.

Coincidentally, Kevin O'Donnell played alongside two more notable Australian cricketers; Sam Loxton and Keith Miller, members of the 1948 Invincibles.

Simon Patrick O'Donnell (born 26 January 1963) is an Australian former cricketer, VFL footballer, and horse racing and cricket commentator.

He is currently a horse breeder and enabler.

He is a former record holder for the fastest One Day International half-century.

He was educated at Deniliquin High School and Assumption College.

O'Donnell played 24 games and kicked 18 goals between 1982 and 1983 in what was then the VFL.

However, he had continued to play cricket and retired from football to focus on his cricket career.

O'Donnell's son James made his AFL debut for Western Bulldogs playing against Carlton on 13 May 2023.

O'Donnell played as an all-rounder for Victoria in the Sheffield Shield between 1984 and 1993, scoring a century in his first match.

O'Donnell made his first class debut for Victoria against South Australia at the MCG in February 1984.

The following summer his bowling gathered attention when he took the wickets of Kepler Wessels and Allan Border in Sheffield Shield game against Queensland, as well as making 54.

An innings of 45 not out helped steer Victoria to victory in a McDonald's Cup game.

He made 78 in a run-heavy game against the touring West Indies and hit 42 off 43 balls and 129 against Western Australia.

He was selected in the Prime Ministers XI to play the West Indies.

According to a contemporary report, "O'Donnell's selection is a timely one as his name has been cropping up regularly in discussions on Australian teams and it will be no surprise if he is selected to play in the one-day series in the New Year. As well as being a more than useful medium-pace bowler O'Donnell has the potential to be a leading batsman, having scored a hard-hitting century against Western Australia in Perth last week."

He went on to play 6 Test matches in 1985, 5 on the Ashes tour of England and one at home, but with a low bowling strike rate in 5 and 4 day cricket, he was more successful in the shorter form of the game.

Seen as a limited-overs specialist with clever medium pace bowling and explosive lower order hitting, he played 87 ODIs between 1985 and 1992, scoring 1242 runs and taking 108 wickets in his career.

In January 1985 O'Donnell was named in the 12 man Australian one day squad.

""I am very delighted", he said. "It will be the biggest thrill of my life to walk out on to the MCG on Sunday.

It was my goal at the start of the year to try and make national selection, but I thought that might not come for two or three years."

O'Donnell's one day debut was a successful one, taking 1–39 and scoring 20 not out against Sri Lanka.

He scored 25 in a defeat against the West Indies.

In the Prime Ministers XI game he took two wickets but dropped two catches.

Kept on in the one day team he took two wickets against Sri Lanka then scored some useful runs in a rare Australian victory over the West Indies.

O'Donnell was a part of the Australian team that won their first world title during the 1987 Cricket World Cup.

He played in Australia's 1987 World Cup Final victory and was a significant wicket-taker and finished the World cup as Australia's most economical bowler, but soon after he suffered severe pain that was diagnosed as non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

He was captain of Victoria for five seasons from 1988–89 until his retirement in 1993.

This was a mixed period, which included a Sheffield Shield victory in 90–91, but Victoria also finished last in 1988–89, 1989–90 and 1992–93.

O'Donnell was voted international cricketer of the year in 1990–91.

As a junior, Simon played Australian rules football for Assumption College, Kilmore, where he kicked 100 goals in his senior year.

During the mid-1990s as part of his work with Channel 9, O'Donnell was a regular on the daytime program The Midday Show, teaming up with former rugby league footballer Paul "Fatty" Vautin on Fridays to give an overview of the weekends sporting events, usually the AFL and NSWRL competitions, and to give their racing tips.

He recovered with treatment to return to the Australian One-Day team in the 1988–89 season and played 43 more limited-overs matches till 10 December 1991 and claimed 56 wickets and made 5 match winning 50 plus scores including the fastest half-century in One Day Internationals (18 balls v Sri Lanka, Sharjah, 1990, which lasted for 6 years until Sri Lankan Sanath Jayasuriya scored 50 from 17 balls v Pakistan at Singapore on 7 April 1996).

O'Donnell maintained a very good batting strike rate of 80.96 runs per 100 balls in ODIs, almost double his scoring rate in Tests.

The pair would generally get into silly situations (e.g. coming out onto the set dressed in blowup Sumo suits), or would be on location such as in early 1994 when O'Donnell was taken on some hot laps of the high speed Calder Park Thunderdome oval racetrack in Melbourne with multiple AUSCAR champion Brad Jones.

O'Donnell hosted Melbourne radio station Sport 927's morning program with Kevin Bartlett until 2004.

With the Nine Network, O'Donnell has been a commentator of cricket and now presents The Cricket Show.

Having owned and managed race horses through his company, O'Donnell Thoroughbreds International, he is also used as an expert on horseracing on Nine's racing coverage.

In November 2011, it was announced that O'Donnell would replace James Brayshaw as host of The Sunday Footy Show.

However, In November 2012, Nine announced that O'Donnell had left the network.