Calling Symonds ... or anyone else

An elaborate scheme has been concocted to recruit a cricketer from outside the conventional pathways - Andrew Symonds is welcome to apply - to the Brisbane Heat Twenty20 team for this summer's Big Bash League. Country and club cricketers from around Queensland will be selected to take part in a regional T20 competition in October, from which four players will be chosen as part of the Queensland squad for the T20 'Baby Bash' among Futures League teams in early December. Two of the players will then be awarded BBL contracts with the Heat.

Darren Lehmann, the Brisbane coach, said the gambit was a genuine attempt to see who may have slipped through the usual net. "This is no gimmick, this is the real deal,” he said. “T20 has an x-factor about it and we are going to find out if someone local has that." The 'search for stars' scheme is the second such concept to be mooted for this summer, with Cricket Australia running its own 'Cricket Superstar' program.