Who is Hamish McKenzie, the new Perth Scorchers left-arm wrist-spinner, the talk of BBL 2023/24?

Hamish McKenzie’s BBL debut, against the Melbourne Renegades, had been an anticlimax. The match had been washed out after the Perth Scorchers batted for 6.5 overs. He finally got a bowl in his next match, against the Melbourne Stars.

Ashton Turner brought him on against Marcus Stoinis, no less, inside the powerplay, when the Stars had progressed to only 34-2 in five overs. McKenzie prevented Stoinis and Thomas Rogers from cutting loose. Stoinis played out two balls cautiously before turning one for a single, and the over yielded a mere three.

Turner took McKenzie away. By the time he returned, the Stars were reeling at 49-5. Hilton Cartwright and Jonathan Merlo played him out for six singles.

In his next over, McKenzie had Cartwright caught at deep mid-wicket. Usama Mir, next man in, tried to flick the next ball but missed the line, and was bowled. The last two overs went for just three, and he finished with 2-13.

Hamish McKenzie has his first two Big Bash wickets! 🔥 #BBL13 pic.twitter.com/WswA7r1Frn

— KFC Big Bash League (@BBL) December 13, 2023

A grade cricketer who had modelled the “elements of his game” on Brad Hogg, also of Western Australia and the Scorchers, McKenzie first made it to the news in October 2022, when the teams had just begun to assemble for the T20 World Cup. Before the big tournament, even before the warm-up matches, teams played tour games to get acclimatised.

India played a Western Australia XI twice at the WACA. They won the first, and few took notice of the left-arm wrist-spinner whose two overs went for 18.

“That was an amazing experience. We played against the likes of KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma, and for the first couple of overs I didn’t really know what I was doing,” McKenzie later recalled.

In the second match, the Indians were 58-2 in pursuit of 169. Now McKenzie took out Hardik Pandya. Later in the spell, he also got Dinesh Karthik, and finished with 2-27. “I settled in OK and the learnings from it were amazing,” he later recalled.

Then barely 23, he spent the rest of the 2022-23 season playing for the Western Australia Second XI. He claimed 2-29 and 6-72 when they beat a combined XI from Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales Country by an innings; the Scorchers called him up as an injury replacement; but McKenzie had to wait for another year for a cap in any format.

He toiled for Subiaco-Floreat in Western Australia Premier Cricket until the Scorchers call-up came ahead of the 2023-24 season. That was this October. They needed a back-up spinner for Ashton Agar, whose calf injury continues to persist.

An eight-wicket haul earned him two caps in the space of three days, in the Marsh One-Day Cup and in the Sheffield Shield. The first was eventless, but he had 2-58 in the Shield match even as New South Wales trounced Western Australia by an innings. Back to grade cricket, he claimed seven wickets against Wanneroo.

At least until Agar regains fitness, or even after that, an immediate long-term return to grade cricket seems unlikely for McKenzie.