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:
“Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer’s lingering blooms delayed,
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o’er the green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)
“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)