Surge Pod: Lessons learned steel Renegades young gun for BBL|15

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Jake Fraser-McGurk has been one of Australia's most fascinating prospects for so long that it's sometimes easy to forget he is only 23 years old.

The pocket rocket is gearing up for his sixth KFC BBL season, the league in which he first put his name firmly on the map as a player for the future with some powerful hitting at the top of the order for the Melbourne Renegades.

His early career has straddled a violent rollercoaster, with the highs taking him to Australia's white ball teams and a sensational IPL debut with the Delhi Capitals, and the lows seeing him omitted from the Capitals earlier this year after six matches.

That first IPL season in 2024 saw him plunder 330 runs from just 141 deliveries across nine innings, including four half-centuries, at an overall strike rate of 234. A year later, he managed just 55 from 52 balls. Highs and lows indeed.

The Surge's Aaron Finch, a former Renegades teammate of Fraser-McGurk's, asked the young batter what he had learned from the success of his initial IPL campaign.

"Just cool your jets," Fraser-McGurk replied.

"Like, it's not going to always be like that… Just relax a little bit. Let things sort of happen, and work hard for things.

"Don't expect things to happen just because you've done well in eight games of cricket."

Fraser-McGurk is one of the most watchable players in the BBL, be it with bat in hand or when pulling in screamers on the boundary in front of the fans at Marvel Stadium.

He has hammered 38 sixes in 44 BBL matches, 30 of those coming in the past two seasons. This, though, brings its own pressure for a player who knows he has a license to thrill.

"It is hard, especially when there's a crowd there, and you're young," he admitted.

"You're like, oh, gee, like this is elite.

"I think where I felt the most of that is my second year of the IPL where everyone expected me to do what I did the year before, and the Delhi crowd are just like, 'here we go, six first ball'… It just has to be a boundary first ball.

"It sort of got to me, and I couldn't really escape it. I kept trying to go harder and harder and just trying to get that first boundary away, and then realised it just doesn't work like that."

Wiser now for the experience, Fraser-McGurk has 88 T20 matches under his belt as he prepares to embark on a new season, one in which he believes his 'Gades have what it takes to bring home the club's second BBL title.

"I feel like we can go all the way, for sure," was his enthusiastic take on his side's prospects.

"I think we've got every base covered really well. For spin, we've got 'Zorb' (Adam Zampa), for pace, it's Tommy Rogers, Jason Behrendorff, in the middle order for allrounders, we got Peakey (Oliver Peake), Harry Dixon, Will Sutherland and Hassan Khan."

"We've talked about a lot about the top order, and I think we've got a lot of the bases covered.

"If two or three are going well in a game, I dare say that will get us a win. I feel like that's all we really need to do, just keep winning.

"Once we learn to win as a group, then it's pretty hard in a tournament not to keep going."