Unlike their female counterparts, Australia’s cricket men were not in demand at the auction for The Hundred, with most Australian involvement already secured through pre-draft signings.<\/p>\n
On a big-spending day when a still little-known uncapped English prospect James Coles caused gasps by being sold for easily the biggest price – a whopping \u00a3390,000 (A$733,000) – the Australian ‘lots’ at the auction generated little interest.<\/p>\n
Australian internationals Jason Behrendorff, Xavier Bartlett and Ben Dwarshuis had all gone unsold until Matt Short did get bought late in the day by the Mike Hussey-coached Welsh Fire for \u00a375,000 (A$141,000).<\/p>\n
It was very different to Wednesday’s women’s auction for The Hundred, with seven Aussie players snapped up.<\/p>\n
But the hard work had clearly already been done by the franchises with five leading Australian internationals, headed by T20 skipper Mitch Marsh, pre-signed in the weeks leading up to the inaugural men’s auction.<\/p>\n
The biggest money-spinning deal involving an Australian is Hurricanes’ power-hitting Tim David, already pre-signed by Trent Rockets for \u00a3350,000 (A$658,000).<\/p>\n
That’s \u00a3140,000 (A$263,000) more than the Nottingham-based franchise paid to secure the services of Beth Mooney, the joint-most expensive buy in the women’s event.<\/p>\n
Marsh, signed for \u00a3200,000 (A$376,000) will be playing at Sunrisers Leeds, who bought mystery spinner Abrar Ahmed for \u00a3190,000 ($A357,000), making him the first player from Pakistan to be signed by one of the Indian-owned teams in the tournament and scotching fears that their players might be snubbed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Who is James Coles?\u00a0<\/p>\n
James Coles is laughing all the way to the bank \/\/ Getty<\/p>\n
A 21-year-old, left-arm orthodox spinning allrounder tipped to make his England debut this year, James Coles found himself at the centre of a bidding war between five franchises at the Hundred Auction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
London Spirit eventually won out, outbidding Sunrisers Leeds, to pay\u00a0\u00a3390,000 (A$733,000). It’s \u00a3150,000 more than the \u00a3240,000 (A$451,000) Welsh Fire paid for Joe Root<\/p>\n
Coles made his first-class debut as a 16-year-old in 2020, becoming the youngest ever debutant for Sussex. He was part of England’s 2022 U19 World Cup squad and has toured Australia twice – with the U19 side in early 2023, and with the England Lions in early 2025, where he hit a second-innigns 67 against a CA XI side in Brisbane.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was a key batter for Sussex in last year’s County Championship as they won promotion from Division Two, passing 1000 runs for the season. After 50 first-class matches he averages 38.82 with eight hundreds.<\/p>\n
The Sussex prospect earned just \u00a331,000 in The Hundred last year with Southern Brave. He’ll now earn more than 12 times as much after shining in South Africa’s domestic T20 event with Sunrisers Eastern Cape.<\/p>\n
In this year’s SA20 competition, he hit 152 runs – 61 of them in one innings – from 89 balls at a strike rate of 170 and average of 38. He took five wickets in seven games at and economy of 7.33 and best of 2-34.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He now is the\u00a0fourth-best paid player in the competition, behind the pre-signed England trio Harry Brook (\u00a3465,000 (A$874,000) with Sunrisers Leeds), Phil Salt (\u00a3450,000 (A$846,000) at Welsh Fire), and Jofra Archer (\u00a3400,000 (A$752,000) at Southern Brave).<\/p>\n
He’s played 67 career T20 matches, taking 50 wickets at an economoy of 8.19 and has scored 1260 runs with an average of 28.63 and strike-rate of 148.<\/p>\n
The biggest overseas signing in the auction was South Africa skipper Aiden Markram, who was bought for \u00a3200,000 (A$376,000) by Manchester Super Giants.<\/p>\n
Australians in the Hundred<\/p>\n
(* denotes bought in auction)<\/p>\n
Birmingham Phoenix – Men: Mitchell Owen \u00a3130,000 (A$244,000). Women: Ellyse Perry \u00a3100,000 ($A187,436), Alana King* \u00a337,500 ($A70,000), Lucy Hamilton \u00a335,000 ($A65,000)<\/p>\n
London Spirit – Men: Adam Zampa \u00a3190,000 (A$357,000). Women: Grace Harris \u00a370,000 ($A131,000)<\/p>\n
Manchester Super Giants – Women: Meg Lanning \u00a395,000 ($A178,000), Maitlan Brown* \u00a340,000 ($A75,000)<\/p>\n
MI London – Women: Nicola Carey* \u00a395,000 ($A178,000)<\/p>\n
Southern Brave – Men: Marcus Stoinis \u00a3150,000 (A$282,000). Women: Sophie Molineux* \u00a347,500 ($A89,000)<\/p>\n
Sunrisers Leeds – Men: Mitch Marsh \u00a3200,000 (A$376,000). Women: Annabel Sutherland \u00a3130,000 ($A244,000), Phoebe Litchfield \u00a3120,000 ($A225,000), Jess Jonassen* \u00a3110,000 ($A206,000)<\/p>\n
Trent Rockets – Men:\u00a0Tim David \u00a3350,000 (A$658,000). Women: Beth Mooney* \u00a3210,000 ($A394,000), Ash Gardner \u00a3100,000 ($A187,000), Kim Garth \u00a342,000 ($A79,000)<\/p>\n
Welsh Fire – Men: Matt Short \u00a375,000 (A$140,978)*. Women: Georgia Wareham \u00a3100,000 ($A187,000), Georgia Voll \u00a380,000 ($A150,000), Heather Graham* \u00a327,500 ($A52,000)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlike their female counterparts, Australia’s cricket men were not in demand at the auction for The Hundred, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85,83],"class_list":["post-536683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}