The ball wasn’t short, just a little back of a length. And the bowler wasn’t particularly quick. At his grade, they’d call him medium-fast. But it bounced wickedly, spat like fat from the pan, and it hit Martin Bedkober flush on the chest, just above his heart. Bedkober staggered, but kept his feet. When the other players rushed towards him, he waved them away. And then he fell. By the time the first of his Toombul team-mates made it to the hospital, Bedkober was dead. He was 22.
In the papers the following week, a sports medic, Dr Howard Toyne, explained that it was “a freak accident”. It was, Toyne said, “just pure bad luck” that the “ball hit Bedkober at the right spot at the right time for cardiac arrest to follow”. That was in 1975. But that phrase “freak accident” rings chillingly familiar today, long after most people have forgotten the details, even the fact, of Bedkober’s death. And it must sound especially hollow to those who have heard it used, before and since, to describe the deaths of those they have lost.
Like the family of Patrick Turpie, 17, who died after he was hit on the chest by a short ball. The coroner called it “a 1,000,000-1 chance” that he, like Bedkober, was hit at such a time in such a place that his heart stopped. That was in 1967. Or the family of Daniel Brown, 13, from Hevingham, Norfolk. In 1991 the coroner told them that it was a “one-in-a-million fluke” that their boy had died from a brain haemorrhage after being hit in the neck by a bouncer while batting. Brown’s death was nearly identical to that of Phillip Hughes, which was also, of course, described as a “freakish accident” by the Cricket Australia doctor Peter Brukner.
James Sutherland, the chief executive of Cricket Australia, used a similar phrase. “A freak incident,” he called it. Consider, then, the deaths of South African schoolboy Matthew Prior, hit on the heart while batting; South African club player Darryn Randall, hit on the head while batting; Pakistani club player Zulfiqar Bhatti, hit on the heart while batting; English schoolboy Tim Melville, hit on the heart while batting; Welsh umpire Alcwyn Jenkins, hit on the head by a return throw; and, of course, Israeli umpire Oscar Hillel, hit on the jaw by a drive which ricocheted up off the stumps.
Seven dead men, seven shattered families, all in the last eight years. Of course the chances of being killed during a match are infinitesimal, almost incalculably so, considering how many balls are bowled in parks, schools, clubs, and stadiums around the world each day. But those words “freakish” and “one-in-a-million” make me uneasy. They underplay the very real dangers of the game, and undermine efforts to make it safer, because they suggest that the risks are so small that we should accept them. As Sutherland said, “one freak incident is one freak incident too many”. And cricket has had many more than the one.
In fact we can’t precisely quantify the risk, which is why we turn instead to pat phrases rather than hard figures. Cricket, which has been so assiduous in cataloguing so many little details, keeps no records of who, exactly, has died while playing the game, how often these deaths have occurred, or precisely what caused them.
A quick glance through the archives suggests that deaths have always been more common than we imagine. In reporting the death in 1923 of a 10-year-old boy “struck under the heart while batting”, the Hull Daily Mail asserted that it was the third such case in a fortnight. Other local papers from the period provide a roll call of 10 Englishmen killed after being hit on the head, or heart, by a cricket ball while either playing or umpiring in club and school matches during the 1920s, 30s, and 50s: John Hall, Charles Briggs, Richard Horn, John Armstrong, Francis Squire, Edward Daymon, William Chew, Derek Godwin, Ivan Munster and Graham Cox.
Perversely, the closer you get to the modern era, the harder it is to track the data, because the newspaper archives are harder to access. This, then, would be the first thing that the authorities could do – start keeping better records of deaths and injuries, so we are better equipped to understand the risks and how to protect against them. The most recent study of helmets, conducted by Dr Craig Ranson of Cardiff Metropolitan University, gathered information about 35 incidents and injuries from various sources, including the internet. It found there were three risk areas – the ball bursting between the peak of the helmet and the grille; the grille itself buckling and making contact with the face; and contact with the unprotected areas around the side and back of the helmet. Some of the study’s observations – in particular that about the ball passing through peak and grille – have now been taken up by manufacturers, who have since started to make helmets safer and stronger.
When Bedkober died, the doctors explained that there were two areas in which a blow from a cricket ball could be fatal – the forehead and the heart. So we now have helmets and chest guards. We know now, too, that there is a third – the neck. In fact, the family of Daniel Brown would argue that we have known that for a long time now. It shouldn’t be beyond the wit of man to invent a helmet that provides a measure of protection there too. Though one manufacturer recently told the Guardian that he didn’t think it was possible because “you need to be able to move quickly so if it’s restricting your head and your neck, we could get to the stage where you just wear full body armour”.
This sounds suspiciously like reductio ad absurdum. There must be another manufacturer out there willing to take on the challenge of designing a helmet that protects the neck without curtailing movement. We don’t need to eliminate the risk of a blow any more than we need to legislate against bouncers. We just need to provide better protection. Too often we settle for the status quo, thinking that carrying on as we were is the best way to honour the dead. It would be a better tribute, surely, to seek change, to try to make the game safer without compromising the spirit of the sport they played and loved. Either that, or we carry on accepting the “freak accidents”.
• This is an extract taken from the Spin, the Guardian’s weekly cricket email. To subscribe, just visit this page, find ‘The Spin’ and follow the instructions
