Latest Hall of Fame inductees revealed

Former Australia captains Ricky Ponting and Karen Rolton, and Test batsman Norm O’Neill are the latest inductees into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame.

The trio were announced as the 2017 inductees on Saturday morning and will be formally inducted at the Allan Border Medal on Monday night.

Ponting, Australia’s leading run scorer in Tests and ODIs, played 168 Tests, 375 ODIs and 17 T20Is for his country between 1995 and 2012.

The 43-year-old played his last match for his country at the WACA in December 2012, retiring with 13,378 Test runs and more centuries (41) than any other Australian.

In the one-day arena, the Tasmanian scored 13,589 runs including 29 hundreds.

By the end of his international career, Ponting was the most capped Australian Test and ODI player and had served as captain for a record 324 matches across all formats.

“Ricky Ponting is unquestionably one of the finest Test and one-day cricketers Australia has produced,” Australian Cricket Hall of Fame Chairman Peter King said.  

“An exceptional fieldsman, he has an outstanding record as a top-order batsman and captain, and was a key figure during a highly successful era in Australian cricket.  That only he and Sachin Tendulkar have scored more than 13,000 runs in both Test and one-day cricket speaks volumes of his place in the game’s history.” 

Rolton was a key member of Australia’s team for more than a decade, playing 14 Tests, 141 one-day internationals and 15 T20Is between 1995 and 2009, scoring more than 5800 runs and posting 10 centuries.

A two-time World Cup winner (in 1997 and 2005), she remains the only woman to score a century in a World Cup final, having notched 107 in the 2005 decider against India in Centurion.

Rolton claimed the Belinda Clark Award on four occasions and replaced Clark was Australian captain in early 2006, a position she held until 2009.

“Karen Rolton was a dominant left-hander who rightly takes her place in the top echelon of women’s cricket,” King said.

“A former captain, she remains Australia’s leading female Test runscorer and sits alongside Belinda Clark on the list of one-day cricket run scorers. Karen’s ability to score quickly and make big scores during her 15-year career played a major part in many of Australia’s triumphs on the international stage.”

O’Neill, who passed away in 2008 aged 71, played 42 Tests for Australia – making his international debut aged just 21.

He scored 2779 runs including six centuries during his seven-year international career – the highlight of which was his 181 in the famous Tied Test against West Indies in 1960.

O’Neill was prolific in the first-class arena where he played 188 matches for NSW, scoring 13,859 runs at 50.95 with 45 tons.  

“Norm O’Neill was a stylish and entertaining batsman, particularly strong off the back foot, who was capable of taking the game away from the opposition on his day,” King said.

“He made his Test debut at the tender age of 21, and is well remembered for his century in the 1960/61 Tied Test just two years later. Possessed with a strong throwing arm, he was an exceptional cover fieldsman and a handy leg-spinner.”

The Australian Cricket Hall of Fame was officially opened in 1996 and the induction of Ponting, Rolton and O’Neill brings the total number of inductees to 49.