Jimmy Ormond only played two Tests for England, but is immortalised in Ashes history for his famous rebuke when sledged by Mark Waugh, twin brother of Steve: “At least I’m the best player in my family.” If Matt Short gets on the wrong side of anyone in the Big Bash League (BBL) this month, he could be met with a similar reply: “At least I’m the best athlete in my marriage.”Short is a two-time BBL MVP for Adelaide Strikers and has won 39 international caps, and forms one half of an Australian sporting power couple. His wife Madi (née Wilson) won two Olympic gold medals before retiring from her professional swimming career in January, a few months after the couple welcomed their first child, a son named Austin.
They recently moved to the Gold Coast in Queensland but Short’s cricketing commitments mean they live an itinerant lifestyle: he is now a regular on the franchise circuit during the Australian winter, and regularly travels interstate to play for Victoria, Strikers, or the national team in white-ball fixtures.
“Mads is a champion,” Short tells ESPNcricinfo. “She’s done a heap of travel in her career for different things… She’s been there and done that. She knows that home time should be for relaxing, and sometimes it’s hard when you’re away on tour and when you get home, you’re straight into looking after a little rascal. She understands it, which is really good.”
Short turned 30 last month, and believes he is ready for the next step in his career after a frustrating year blighted by injuries. He has dominated the BBL over the last four seasons, scoring nearly 500 runs more than his nearest challenger, and has spent the last two years captaining the Strikers.
But he is yet to lock down a permanent spot in Australia’s white-ball teams and hopes that his performances over the next six weeks can not only help the Strikers recover from their wooden-spoon season last winter, but help him achieve his target of breaking into the Australia squad for next year’s T20 World Cup.
Short was a travelling reserve at the 2024 edition in the Caribbean and has come to terms with the idea that, despite most of his success coming as an opening batter, he will need to prove his versatility in order to be part of a team that has won 13 of its last 16 completed T20Is. His handy offspin will also be a relevant factor at a tournament co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka.
“The top five or six is probably pretty locked in with [Travis] Head, [Mitchell] Marsh, [Josh] Inglis, [Cameron] Green, [Tim] David, and then guys like [Marcus] Stoinis and [Glenn] Maxwell. It’s pretty packed. It was nice in [the recent] India series to get that experience of batting through the order: come World Cup time, the opportunity could be at the top, or it could be down lower.
“It’s a really good environment, and the boys have a lot of fun. It’s just nice to be around such a successful team. I’m hoping to cement my spot somewhere in the line-up, but at the moment, it’s just about doing what I can captaining the Strikers and trying to put some performances on the board to win some games for us. The rest will hopefully take care of itself.”
Matt and Madi Short have set up home on the Gold Coast in Queensland•Getty Images
That includes Tuesday’s IPL auction, where Short has registered with a base price of INR 1.5 crore (AUD 250,000 approx.) and is hoping for a second crack at the tournament after playing six games for Punjab Kings in 2023. He is competing for one of 31 available spots for overseas players, and says he is “a lot more ready” now than he was two-and-a-half years ago.
“I was probably rushed into it a little bit,” he reflects. “That was my first-ever overseas tournament, so straight into the IPL was a pretty big deal… The whole whirlwind of the IPL that first time was just like, ‘Jeez, this is crazy overwhelming’ and I probably didn’t deal with the pressure as well as I would have liked… I sort of went away from my game.
“Having three or four good seasons under my belt now in the Big Bash, and playing in different comps around the world, it definitely gives you the confidence or even just the general experience of handling pressure and playing in different conditions, so I’d be a lot more ready for it now if selected.”
Short has worked hard on the psychological side of the game since then, enlisting the mental-skills coach David Reid. “He works at Chennai [Super Kings] – or wherever Flem [Stephen Fleming is], so in MLC as well – but he actually coached me back at Northcote in Premier Cricket back in Melbourne, so I’ve known him for a long while.
Matt Short knows he will likely have to bat middle-order for Australia in T20Is•Cricket Australia via Getty Images
“I think my game is there physically – it feels really comfortable at the moment – but we’re working on making the right decisions for longer, which means putting away all the bad thoughts and distractions that come into your mind and making sure you’re just focused on the moment, and reacting to the ball that’s coming down. A lot of work has gone into that.
“If I don’t get picked up, there’s always other opportunities. Me and my wife always just say, ‘Let the universe decide.’ If one thing happens, we’ll find something else if it doesn’t. I’ll give it [the auction] a watch and just see what happens.”
Further down the line lies another goal: to emulate his wife in winning gold at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. “It’s definitely come up in conversation,” Short says with a smile, before conceding that a single medal would still leave him running second: “I’m definitely not going to get anywhere near her standard.
“She’s got a lot of friends that she swam with that were younger back when she was swimming that were going to push for LA, and then now cricket’s there. It’s like, ‘Oh, it’d be cool if you are there as well’ with a heap of her friends. It’s still, what three years away… It’d be cool to get there, but I’ll take it one day at a time.”
Matt Roller is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98
