South Africa’s Johan Botha will be coming out of retirement and will feature in this year’s Big Bash League and will play for Hobart Hurricanes. Botha has previously played three seasons with the Adelaide Strikers from 2012 to 2014, before joining the Sydney Sixers from 2015 to 2018, and then the Hobart Hurricanes for BBL 08.
Botha retired due to the “physical fatigue” and now, he said that he is fresh and is “ready to offer” for the game.
“Obviously, the Hurricanes is the last team I finished with, and it wasn’t quite the end I wanted. There were four games to go in the season back then, and the guys were playing really good cricket. I didn’t think I’d get another opportunity to play, and then chatting to Ben Rohrer and Griff (head coach Adam Griffith) – they said there might be an opportunity coming up for me,” Botha said in an official Hobart Hurricanes release.
“It was a choice between ”Do I further my coaching career, or do I miss the first couple of games of the Pakistan Super League.”
“I figured I’m as fit as I’ve ever been, and I feel I can still make a contribution to the team. I’ve missed playing but I didn’t really want to put it out there and say ”can you pick me” in case it didn’t work out, so we kept it quiet from when we first chatted about it at the Shield hub in Adelaide, and it slowly built up from there,” he added.
Botha will be joining the team as a local player considering the fact that he is an Australian citizen now.
