I guess when you are young, your sporting heroes are probably 10-15 years older than you are. As a result, given that I am now in my early seventies, I should not be surprised to learn that some of them are passing away.

Today saw the passing of one of the two favourite cricketers from my childhood.

The wonderful South Melbourne, Victorian and Australian Test batsman of the 60s and 70s, Ian Redpath, aka Redders, passed away today at the age of 83.

I realise that Redders was a Geelong man, having been to school at Geelong College and living all his life in Geelong, but back then if you were a quality cricketer in Geelong, you had to come to Melbourne and play with one of the District sides as this was well before Geelong were admitted to District (Premier) cricket. As a passionate South Melbourne supporter of both cricket and footy, I was fortunate that Redders came to play with us and I followed his career from District to Shield to Test level, largely in parallel with my other cricket hero Alan Connolly.

I can’t remember what I did last week, but for some reason I can distinctly remember Redder’s first Test. I was excited to hear that he was picked to play the second test of the 1963-64 series against South Africa in Melbourne in the first days of the new year – this was before the tradition of Boxing Day and New Years tests being in Melbourne and Sydney respectively.

As my memory can sometimes play tricks on me, I have just gone back to the record books and the Test was actually exactly as I remember it, watching from my seat in the old Southern Stand at the G.

The Australian captain Bobby Simpson put the South Africans into bat and despite the presence of the great Graeme Pollock who was caught at slip by the captain off Graeme “Garth” McKenzie, they were all out for 274 with the bespectacled opener Eddie Barlow making a century. Then it was time for the Australians to bat and there was my hero walking out to the middle, accompanied by his fellow Victorian Bill Lawry. I was nervous for him. The South Africans has a pretty good pace attack with the speed of Peter Pollock and the swing of Joe Partridge who was my favourite South African on that tour.

I need not have worried as Lawry and Redpath, as they had so often done for their State, piled on a century opening partnership, and then turned it into a double century stand by which time Lawry had already reached his ton. There weren’t many batsmen whose run rate was slower than Lawry’s, but with the score on 219 and Redders needing three for a century on debut, he was bowled by Partridge. Out for 97, a great start to his Test career, but frustratingly short of joining the illustrious band of Australia batsmen to have made a century on debut.

My other distinct memory of that game was Bobby Simpson coming in at number 3 to replace Redders and being clean bowled for a duck by a searing Pollock yorker. I remember thinking maybe sitting around for four hours with his pads on while the two openers made their huge partnership may have left him ill prepared for the delivery he received.

I don’t remember anything else about the game, but on looking at the records today, I note that Australia won comfortably by 8 wickets on the last morning with Redders out for 25 in the second innings.

Redders went on to play 66 Tests for Australia between 1964 and 1976 finishing with a batting average of 43.45 and eight carefully crafted centuries, many of them at crucial moments in games and series. I loved every one of them.

Redders might not have quite got a hundred in his first Test, but he dd get one in his last, against the might of the West Indies again in his home town. He added another 70 in the  second innings playing a major part in delivering a victory against the Windies of Loyd, Richards, Fredericks, Kallicharan, Holding, Gibbs etc.

Following his retirement from Test cricket to look after his antiques business in Geelong (players of that era actually had a life outside of cricket), he was lured back to international cricket as part of World Series cricket and played another couple of seasons there. He later coached Victoria. He was deservedly inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 2023.

I only met Redders once and that was a few years ago at a lunch during the 2017 Boxing Day Test. In the best tradition of young boy meets his hero, I was a bit lost for words (which may surprise some of you). But even then it was clear that he was a genuinely humble man who had endeared himself to his teammates and the cricketing public for many years.

RIP my hero Redders.

This week marks the 10^th anniversary of the tragic death of Australian Test cricketer Phillip Hughes. On November 25 2014, he was playing in a Shield match for South Australia at the SCG. At the time Hughes was in good form and was widely tipped to be selected in the upcoming  First Test  against India. On that fateful day he was batting beautifully according to all present until he inexplicably missed a straightforward short ball and was hit in the neck. He immediately collapsed to the ground deeply unconscious. But for the outstanding immediate management from the medical team led by Cricket Australia Chief Medical Officer John Orchard, Phil would have died on the spot. Instead he was transferred unconscious but alive to St Vincent’s Hospital where he underwent urgent surgery to relieve the pressure on the brain.

At the time I was the Australian cricket team doctor and back home in Melbourne in between the just completed one day series against South Africa and the Test series which was about to commence. I came out of a meeting in the city to see a message that Phil had been hit and that “it looked bad”. I jumped straight into my car and headed for the airport calling Cricket Australia to get me on the next flight to Sydney.

I got to the hospital in the early evening and received an update from Dr Orchard. The news was not great, Phil had a large brain bleed and was being kept alive on a respirator, but the specialists thought there was a chance that he might survive if the pressure in the brain could be lowered. I sent the emotionally traumatised Dr Orchard home and went upstairs to join Phil’s mother and sister who had been watching the game at the SCG and his close friend and Test captain Michael Clarke. We were later joined by Phil’s brother Jason and then his father Greg.

I spent the night sitting in the waiting room outside the Intensive Care unit and was joined by Phil’s friend and manager James Henderson. The following morning the news was not encouraging and Phil’s condition worsened. Late that morning the specialists called Phil’s family in and told them the devastating news that their son and brother was not going to survive. They offered to keep Phil alive on the respirator for as long as the family wished.

By this time, most of Phil’s Australian team mates had arrived in Sydney and they were all given the opportunity to say their farewell to Phil. It was my job to take them up to the ICU two at a time. Many were overcome with grief when they saw Phil lying unconscious with tubes everywhere. I also had the unpleasant task in two separate phone hookups of telling Phil’s South Australian teammates who by that time had returned home, and the Cricket Australia Board, that Phil was not going to survive. The deathly silence when I imparted that news was a memory that remains with me today.

For most of Phil’s young team mates it was the first time they had ever known someone who was dying, let alone a young man of their own age in the prime of his cricket career. Phil was an enormously popular cricketer and it you had run a poll on the most loved player in the first class cricket scene, then Phil would have been a runaway winner.

Personally I had got to know Phil on the previous year’s Ashes tour where we sat across from each other on the team bus – everyone had a set seat that rarely changed – and he was always asking questions. I got to love his cheeky grin. He had two great passions – cricket and his Angus cattle – a love he shared with his dad.

After 24 hours the family made the decision to turn off the life support and soon after Philip passed away. I had been keeping the cricket public up to date with Phil’s progress in regular press briefings and when it was decided to hold a press conference following the announcement of Phil’s death, I asked to speak. I wanted to convey a number of things in my address.

Firstly I wanted to pay tribute to the care he received both initially at the ground and subsequently in the hospital. I also wanted to pay tribute to Michael Clarke who had been a tower of strength to the family over the previous 48 hours. Most of all I wanted to reassure the Australian cricket public that this was a freak accident, a one in a million chance, and that it was not going to happen to them.

After the press conference we all walked down to the SCG where the cricket community had gathered, and I guess that is when it really hit home to me as we looked out on the pitch where only a couple of days before, Phillip had been putting together another brilliant innings. I particularly got emotional speaking to one of my sons who was in the US at the time and realising that he was almost exactly Phil’s age. I could not even imagine what Phil’s parents were going through.

The following morning the Test team gathered at the SCG to decide how to handle the ensuing few days. We were due to play a Test match in Brisbane the following week and the players unanimously agreed that they could not even consider playing until after the funeral which they all wanted to attend. The funeral was later fixed to be held the following Wednesday and the Test schedule altered so we would play the first Test a few days later in Adelaide.

The funeral in Phil’s home town of Macksville was an emotional, moving occasion with Michael Clarke speaking beautifully and a number of his team mates acting as pallbearers. Phil’s death had had a huge impact both in Australia and in the wider cricket world. Most Australian houses placed a cricket bat beside their front door as a tribute, and the funeral was nationally televised and attended by many dignitaries including the Prime Minister.

After the funeral we flew straight to Adelaide where we had four days before facing India in the First Test. What was uncertain was how the players would cope with the prospect of facing fast bowling. Wisely, coach Darren Lehmann scheduled a low key first practice away from the Adelaide Oval. Most of the batters struggled, a number having to leave the nets after a couple of deliveries.

I remember thinking at the time that there was no way we were going to be ready for a Test match in a few days. Slowly each day things got better and by the start of the Test most seemed to be OK.

The start of the match was another highly emotional moment when a tribute to Phil from Richie Benaud was played while the teams lined up. It was something that was of course very appropriate, but hardly the ideal preparation for our batsmen who were about to face India’s quick bowlers. Phil’s memory was everywhere during that Test with his Test cap number 408 emblazoned on the turf and every time that number or the number 63, which was Phil’s not out score in that final fateful innings, came up the players and the crowd became very emotional. Interestingly the three players who were probably closest to Phil all made centuries in that first Australian innings. I knew right from the start that there was no way Michael Clarke in particular, was not going to make a ton. Phil had always regarded Michael as his “big brother” and the two were very close.

The match, which on the final day was meandering towards a draw, suddenly came to life with an inspired spell from Nathan Lyon and Australia pulled off an unexpected victory. After the game we all stood in a circle around the 408 sign on the turf and sang the Australian team song with even more gusto than usual. There was not a dry eye among the team and support staff.

Phil had died from an injury known as a vertebral artery dissection in which, due to the impact of the ball at a particular spot in his neck, damaged the lining of the artery causing a subarachnoid haemorrhage in his brain. Phil’s death prompted me to investigate if there were other incidents of a similar injury either in cricket or other sports. I discovered that there had been a few isolated incidents in other sports such as ice hockey, baseball and golf, all when an object struck a player in the neck and mostly resulting in immediate death. There had been one previous cricket death recorded in Melbourne 21 years previously when a batter was hit in the neck at net practice.

While these incidents were incredibly rare, the horrific consequences encouraged cricket authorities to look at ways of protecting the neck from a similar blow. As a result, neck guards were developed and initially offered as an option for batters, later becoming part of the helmet design. Nowadays all batsmen have protection to the neck area. Ironically one of the batters most reluctant to wear the neck guard was Steve Smith who was struck in the neck while batting in the 2019 Lords Test. That incident brought back bad memories for those watching and when Smith dropped to the ground, many feared the worst. Fortunately Steve was not seriously injured and, after initially leaving the field, he was able to return and went on to make 92.

Phil Hughes’ death was a massive shock to the cricketing world – you are not supposed to die playing cricket. It leaves us with memories of a prodigiously talented batsmen and much loved team mate who undoubtedly would have gone on to a long international career in all forms of the game. We all miss you Hugh.

Peter Brukner was the Australian cricket team doctor from 2012 to 2017.