Lewis started as a graduate engineer with Innovation in May 2020 and is now a XXXX. Outside of work, he trades in his PPE for a green and gold uniform and represent Australia in the Cricket International Inclusion Series. The Inclusion Series is any cricket tournament that involves the best disabled cricket players representing their country in an international series. In June 2022, the England deaf cricket team travelled to Brisbane for the Deaf Ashes. The Australian team played five T20 matches and three One Day Internationals (ODI) with England running our series winners.
In October the deaf Champions Trophy was held in in Ajmer, United Arab Emirates. Australia, South Africa, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan competed. The Australian team had some good games but ultimately, India beat South Africa to win the tournament. The following month, Lewis travelled to Brisbane to play in the National Cricket Inclusion Championships (NCIC), the state championship.
Lewis has played cricket since he was 5 or 6 but never had aspirations to pursue high-level cricket. In 2019 an old deaf friend, who had recently played deaf basketball for Australia introduced Lewis to deaf cricket. Lewis reached out and two weeks later he was off to Geelong to play for the deaf NSW cricket team in the state championships. The team went on to win the cup and Lewis was the highest scoring batsmen of the tournament!
In everyday life, Lewis wears two cochlear implants and hears reasonably well most of the time. In deaf cricket, no hearing assistance is permitted. Having been born profoundly deaf in both ears, removing his cochlear implants means Lewis plays cricket in total silence. In his first match for NSW, he was run out because his batting partner was trying to tell him not to run but Lewis didn’t realise until too late! Since then, he’s come to love playing in silence, he finds it very calming which might have something to do with the absence of opposition sledging.
Playing deaf cricket has inspired Lewis to learn Auslan, but he is now studying it at TAFE and looks forward to becoming more involved in his local deaf communities. Auslan is deeply revered by deaf people, and it’s become a life goal of his to become fluent.
Lewis says…
One of the reasons I love playing deaf cricket and being around deaf people is that we always make sure everyone is included and understands what is happening. An experience that we all share in our everyday lives is that although most of us have hearing assistance (cochlear implants or hearing aids), we still very often miss a lot of what is said and feel too embarrassed to constantly ask people to repeat themselves. We also miss a lot of what is said without even realising it.
It is an interesting challenge for us to communicate together since we have varying levels of sign language ability, hearing assistance and spoken English. However, we always find a way to make sure everyone is included and understands what is happening whether it is on the cricket field, at training sessions, or even when playing cards in the hotel room or at the pub after a tournament!
