Photo Credit: Sydney Sixers
The Sydney Sixers have scored a coup ahead of this season’s rebel Women’s Big Bash League with veteran all-rounder Angela Reakes returning to the club that she played for during the competition’s opening three seasons, including the title winning campaigns of WBBL|02 and WBBL|03.
An exercise physiologist, who is considered by pundits as one of the best fielders in women’s cricket, Reakes spent a season at the Melbourne Stars during WBBL|04, before missing the entire campaign last year due to a torn Achilles.
Reakes played much of her junior cricket and five seasons at the NSW Breakers alongside Sixers’ superstar teammates Ellyse Perry and Alyssa Healy and was recently appointed the captain of the ACT Meteors for the Women’s National Cricket League.
“I am super excited to be back at the Sixers,” Reakes, a powerful ball striker and leg spinner originally from Byron Bay, said.
“For me it seems like home.
“I really like the brand of cricket the Sixers play and I think Ben Sawyer is a terrific coach that I am really looking to learn from.
“It’s the same playing alongside the quality international players that the Sixers have.”
Even at 29, with more than a decade of WNCL and WBBL competition on her CV, Reakes said she still has that will to improve her game.
“Getting into such a professional set up you can learn things. The Sixers as a club and as a team have years of success. The brand is very successful,” she said.
“My job will be to be quite impactful at the back end of games. To potentially set us up to win games.”
Sawyer, who is the Sixers only ever head coach and was an assistant with the Australian team that won the Women’s T20 World Cup earlier this year, said the door had always been open for Reakes to come back to Sydney.
“We were really happy to see Ange get an increased opportunity by releasing her to play at the Stars a few years ago but we always said we’d welcome her back if she wanted to return,” Sawyer said.
“Now she’s back we are really glad to see someone in our squad who had such a positive role for us in the first three seasons of the WBBL.
“We can see her playing an ongoing active role this summer. She is one of the best fielders in the competition and will no doubt be strong again for us in that area. She’s also good down the order with the bat and can bowl leggies.”
The Sixers squad now consists of 13 players: Erin Burns, Stella Campbell, Lauren Cheatle, Maddy Darke, Ash Gardner, Alyssa Healy, Jodie Hicks, Emma Hughes, Marizanne Kapp, Ellyse Perry ©, Angela Reakes, Hayley Silver-Holmes, Dane van Niekerk.
