Brisbane Heat’s faith in unheralded left-armer rewarded with player of the match performance in BBL

Spencer Johnson was almost moved to tears in the moments following the Brisbane Heat’s stunning demolition of the Sydney Sixers to win this season’s KFC BBL title.

It wasn’t long ago Johnson’s career was at a crossroads playing club cricket in Adelaide, and the realisation that just 12 months later he was a Big Bash champion was starting to sink in.

He’s ticked many boxes in his rapid rise through the ranks of Australian cricket – T20 and first-class debuts (which included 6-87 in his first Marsh Sheffield Shield match) were followed by his maiden T20 international and ODI caps last August and September.

But the way his dominated the BBL|13 finals series – with nine wickets at an economy of five along with an extraordinary 41 dot balls out of 60 in the three matches – was perhaps his crowning moment.

“I owe the Brisbane Heat everything … (they’ve) changed my life,” Johnson said in the minutes following his player of the match 4-26 in the Final.

“When I came up here last year, I wasn’t really sure where my career was at.

“The Heat gave me a chance and where I am now is a lot to do with them and the opportunity they’ve given me.”

The Brisbane Heat is full of those stories.

Josh Brown rose to prominence in Queensland’s T20 Max club competition 16 months ago, and he too starred in the finals series with an epic 140 followed by 53 in the Final to deliver the club their second men’s title 11 years after their first.

Johnson has since landed a A$1.78m pay day with an IPL contract, and now Brown too has snared his first overseas gig on the T20 circuit, signing up to play for Chattogram in the Bangladesh Premier League.

But perhaps the most remarkable of those stories is their championship-winning skipper Nathan McSweeney, who four games ago was left out of their XI alongside Brown to make room for Australian stars Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne.

Brown and McSweeney were both added to the Heat roster as replacement players last season but proved the club’s most influential batters in the finals campaign. The pair put together second-wicket partnerships of 119 and 85 in the Challenger and season decider respectively as they overcame consecutive losses to lift the trophy.

“I can’t say I pictured myself standing here at the start of the year,” McSweeney told cricket.com.au post-match.

“But I’m thankful for the faith in me to be the leader of the Brisbane Heat, it’s a pretty special team to captain.

“When you win a title, you rely on more than just the 11 players that are playing every game, it’s a squad mentality and that’s certainly what it is here at the Brisbane Heat.

“Although we didn’t play every game, the group that we have, it just shows the strength that we can bring to chop and change (our playing XI).

“And poor Charlie Wakim played the semi-final and he missed out tonight, and Mitch Swepson vice versa to miss last game and come in tonight and play a pivotal role.”

While Johnson could consider himself unlucky not to be playing in Australia’s white-ball series against the West Indies next month, he does have the IPL in March to look forward to. But for now, it’s back to his roots as early as Sunday as he “parachutes” in for West Torrens in their Premier Cricket T20 final in Adelaide.

“It hasn’t really sunk in to be honest, but I think what’s worked for me in the past is just one game at a time, one week at a time, and trying to stay as present as possible,” he told cricket.com.au.

“My international debut was pretty special but in terms of a team performance this is number one for sure.

“To have the season we’ve had, we deserve to win, we deserve to be here and we did it, so it’s very special.”