Zanden Jeh bolts from South Brisbane, Premier Cricket to Australia A squad for Top End series
He hasn’t played a state game, yet Zanden Jeh is on the cusp of playing for Australia A. This is the incredible story of the bolter from Brisbane’s suburbs.
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Zanden Jeh assumed it was a scam call.
Why would an unknown number be bothering him in the middle of a school day as he completed teaching rounds at Brisbane’s Padua College?
Then the 21-year-old’s phone pinged with a voicemail message.
“I just said to my supervising teacher, ‘do you mind if I just duck out and quickly listen to this voicemail?’ Then I did so and it was Tony Dodemaide saying, ‘hey mate, it’s Tony Dodemaide here from Cricket Australia, I just want to quickly give you a call,” Jeh said.
The Queensland academy spinner still needed to be convinced the call was legitimate.
When he phoned Dodemaide back, the former Victorian all-rounder turned national selector dropped a bombshell which sent Jeh’s head spinning.
With leading domestic spinners Todd Murphy, Corey Rochiccioli (county cricket) and Matt Kuhnemann (Test squad) unavailable, Jeh had been chosen for Australia A’s top end series against Sri Lanka A, which starts on Friday.
After crossing from Valley District to South Brisbane in Queensland’s premier competition, Jeh had been on the radar of state selectors.
A left-arm orthodox bowler, he had spent two years in the state’s academy and made a few Second XI appearances, including one where he snared the prized scalp of Glenn Maxwell.
A Queensland contract next summer seemed a realistic goal.
An Australia A call-up without playing a state game? Surely that was fanciful.
“I think I was a bit stunned on the other end of the phone,” Jeh said.
“I had a few of the boys outside of class looking at me going, ‘what’s this bloke doing? He’s on the phone in the middle of class’.
“It was a pretty hectic call to get in the middle of a school day. Pretty incredible sort of feeling trying to process it all.”
Jeh will feature alongside players with international experience including Nathan McSweeney, Kurtis Patterson and Matt Renshaw in a team coached by former Test skipper Tim Paine.
“There’s definitely an attraction to the left-arm spin side of things, which he is,” Queensland academy head coach Jarrad Loughman said.
“There’s no way he would have ever predicted this would be happening when he got to the end of his season. None of us would have.”
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Jeh’s ascension to the Australia A squad started more than 15 years ago when his dad Michael made a fateful suggestion.
Michael, a former county cricketer with Oxford University, wanted his oldest son to learn to bowl with his left-hand.
“Funnily enough there’s videos of me bowling with my right arm. I am a righty at everything — I write right-handed, kick right-footed,” Zanden said.
“Everything I do with my dominant side is with my right.
“I must have been about four or five years old when dad switched me around to being a leftie.
“He says now the reason behind that was, he figured there’s more right-arm mediums going around than there are left-arm mediums.
“At the time he was like, ‘might as well just learn to bowl left arm because it’s going to be a point of difference’.”
That point-of-difference was largely why Jeh, who plays alongside his brother and state under-19 paceman Saxon for South Brisbane’s First XI, bolted from Brisbane’s suburbs to be chosen for Australia A.
But can he still bowl with his right arm, should he choose to?
“I sometimes do it as a bit of a pisstake. Just to try and do it in the nets. But it’s nothing special at all,” he said.
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Jeh’s first taste of competitive cricket was as a six-year-old with Ferny Districts, a club based about 35 minutes northwest of the Gabba.
It was clear he was destined for big things when the first three balls he bowled in an official match were a hat-trick.
“This poor kid, I just happened to get three straight,” he said.
“I didn’t really know what a hat-trick was.”
Jeh said it was his destiny to progress from Ferny Districts to Valleys, where his dad Michael spent most of his cricket career after moving to Australia.
As a teenager Jeh had offers from private and GPS schools to leave Ferny Grove State High School on a sport scholarship.
For the second straight innings in this game, Glenn Maxwell has picked out deep square leg. He’s gone for 10 to left-arm tweaker Zanden Jeh. pic.twitter.com/uOhOBYVoev
— Daniel Cherny (@DanielCherny) October 17, 2024
But that would have meant spending half the summer playing school cricket and missing valuable opportunities to hone his talent at Valleys.
It’s the club where his brother made his first grade debut and Zanden’s sister Sierra, now working as a model in London, was also a First XI cricketer.
And it’s the club where he met Cameron Boyce, the seven-time Australian spinner who has become a valuable mentor.
Jeh assumed his time as a first-grade player was over when Boyce arrived at Peter Easton Oval.
“A spinner of that quality coming to the club, you think, ‘I’ll probably lose my spot, probably play second grade for a fair bit’,” he said.
“I remember the first session he came down and said how excited he was to play alongside me. I remember thinking at the time, ‘why?’”
Boyce ended up chauffeuring Jeh to most away games, imparting valuable wisdom to his Valleys protege while on the road.
Those lessons continue today.
Boyce has been tasked with educating the next wave of Queensland slow bowlers as the state’s academy spin coach.
“He has always been a great supporter of mine,” Jeh said.
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There might come a point soon where Jeh has to choose between cricket and his other sporting love – rugby union.
He is among the top rugby referees in Queensland, officiating in men’s Premier grade and Super Rugby women’s fixtures.
Jeh’s rise through the refereeing ranks has helped him build a trait every spin bowler needs – resilience.
He’s used to copping barbs from the sidelines or sledges from players much older and more experienced than he is.
“If we have a bad game when you get a lot of decisions wrong or you bowl a lot of bad balls or get whacked around, how you then sort of reflect and come back from that is pretty similar,” he said.
Jeh’s maturity belies his age and at only 21, he is an accomplished orator.
He sent a message before this interview to warn he hadn’t spoken to media before.
Then, he spent more than 20 minutes eloquently explaining how he had come to be in a position so many young cricketers can only dream of.
A few moments after hanging up the phone, Jeh dialled again.
He wanted to make sure his longtime sponsor – Brisbane’s Keith Dudgeon Cricket Specialist – got a mention.
They’d backed him since he was eight years old, Zanden explained, and were a big part of his cricket story.
So is Jeh’s Sri Lankan heritage.
He’s not exaggerating when he says most of his dad’s family lived in Ferny Grove when he was growing up.
His grandparents, who “literally lived around the corner”, delivered a reminder of their heritage each week by cooking up a Sri Lankan feast.
Jeh says he couldn’t be prouder of his background, but considers himself “as Australian as they come”.
While juggling cricket, refereeing and university studies, he has found time to work with the Usman Khawaja Foundation to encourage others with Asian backgrounds to pursue a cricket career.
“He’s a terrific young fella. He always bounces into training,” Loughman said.
“He’s hungry to learn. He’s confident enough in his ability but he’s very conscious of where he sits as a young player and he’s just trying to get better.”
Originally published as Zanden Jeh bolts from South Brisbane, Premier Cricket to Australia A squad for Top End series
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