Former fast bowler Peter George wants to commercialise a cricket gadget

This venture is chasing about $2m to get its cricket tech product to market, with stars like Chris Lynn already on the team.

CRICKET GIZMO

Advances in sporting technology seem to be gathering pace and, for evidence of this, look no further than aptly-named Sportech Industries.

The company is the brainchild of former Australian Test fast bowler Peter George, who is aiming to commercialise a gadget which helps umpires and reduces game delay.

His “MyCall No Ball detector’’ instantly detects when a bowler oversteps the front landing crease.

Featuring a sensor clipped on to a bowler’s shoe and another one on the line, it automatically detects no-ball deliveries.

The business kicked off its latest capital raising effort in December, chasing about $2m to get the product to market, and it’s attracted plenty of sporting and business talent into its ranks.

Former Australian Test bowler Peter George.

We learned on Monday that Brisbane Heat star Chris Lynn has just splashed out an undisclosed amount for an equity stake in the company, which has already rustled up more than $500,000 from paid shares on issue.

Lynn described himself as “a fan of the technology’’ and said its implementation “would remove a lot of the stress and drama that the on and off field officials encounter during high pressure matches’’.

He heard about Sportech from Rob Goudswaard, the former Brisbane-based boss of CUA, which still sponsors the Heat.

Goudswaard came aboard late last year as an “executive adviser’’ to Sportech, which has also just tapped former Queensland Cricket corporate affairs manager Kate Davies to sit on its advisory board.

They join the likes of Mike Avey, who heads up seed capital outfit Brisbane Angels Group, and Artemis Robotics founder Darren Foster in providing expert advice to George, who runs the enterprise in conjunction with his missus, Suzy.

George, who first registered the company in 2014, rustled up $1m in investments in the last financial year, including nearly $250,000 from the federal government’s Accelerating Commercialization fund. Similarly, the state government’s Ignite Ideas fund kicked in $100,000.

Other former cricketers, including Michael Kasprowicz and ex-Queensland captain Chris Hartley, are also active in separate tech enterprises to enhance the sport.

PLUGGED IN

A struggling Brisbane battery maker is about to do its bit to help the nation bounce back from last year’s devastating bushfires.

Redflow revealed this month that it has joined forces with Optus to deploy up to 56 of its zinc-bromine batteries at black spots around the country as part of a “mobile network hardening program’’.

The $13.2m initiative is part of a $650m bushfire recovery package unveiled last May.

Company boss Tim Harris said the weather-hardened and eco-friendly batteries “will play an important role in improving the resiliency of networks, particularly in bushfire-prone areas’’.

Redflow previously teamed up with Optus to deploy the units in the Daintree in 2019 and has also struck deals with telcos overseas.

Despite the world’s growing pivot towards battery usage, the company has consistently lost huge sums of money since floating a decade ago, most recently reporting $10m of red ink in the last financial year.

To compensate, it has relied on multiple capital raisings to stay afloat. Just last year it rustled up another $6.9m as revenues punched through $2m for the first time.