Sport
In sport, Basil played Senior Basketball, representing South Australia when the team won the Australian Championship in 1958. During the 1980s he was the owner of the Newcastle Basketball team and from 1984–87, he was a Director of the N.S.W. Association (now Cricket New South Wales). He is a Life Member of Cricket NSW.
His major charities include The McGrath Foundation, where he is a major donor, financing the salaries of the salary of a breast care nurse in South Australia, he is a First X1 patron of the Steve Waugh Foundation and a generous supporter of the Pick Me UP wheelchair service for the Sir Roden & Lady Cutler Foundation.
His donations to sporting initiatives and scholarships include the Barassi Scholarship, supporting new talent for the Sydney Swans and he is a major contributor to the Club’s football centre at the SCG.
He also assists initiatives that identify and support emerging talent in country NSW cricket. Some of his past and current scholars include Phillip Hughes, Steven Smith, Usmin Khawaja, Mitchell Starc. Josh Hazlewood, Patrick Cummins, Nic Maddinson, Ellyse Perry, Alyssa Healy and Erin Osborne.
The scholarship helps ease the financial burden of up-and-coming cricketers, whether it be assisting with the cost of petrol travelling to and from training, equipment or helping with study.
Basil is one of the founders of the Bradman Museum in Bowral, New South Wales and a life member of the Bradman Foundation. He funded a respite centre in Moruya for elite athletes from the Australian Institute of Sport, Canberra, and similar centres in Tweed Heads. (see link below)
Read more about this topic: Basil Sellers
Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“Americans living in Latin American countries are often more snobbish than the Latins themselves. The typical American has quite a bit of money by Latin American standards, and he rarely sees a countryman who doesn’t. An American businessman who would think nothing of being seen in a sport shirt on the streets of his home town will be shocked and offended at a suggestion that he appear in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in anything but a coat and tie.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one’s appetite is not too keen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)