The parents of a teenager killed in an accident at cricket training last year have re-lived the moment they knew they lost their son – while also revealing their feelings about the boy who delivered the fatal ball.
Ben Austin was hit in the neck by a ball during a training session at Wally Tew Reserve in Melbourne’s southeast in October before being rushed to hospital in a critical condition.
The 17-year-old was placed on life support but died in Monash Children’s Hospital the following day.
His father Jace revealed to the ABC that he now doesn’t watch the game he loves in the same way.
He said on the day his son was struck he didn’t want anything to do with the game, but he eventually worked up the courage to place his son’s cricket gear in the nets where he died.
‘We got his bat, his gloves, my family … just wanted to be where he last stood,’ a tearful Mr Austin said last October.
Ben Austin was killed when he was struck on the neck with a cricket ball when training last October
Ben’s parents Tracey and Jace still think about their son every day and don’t blame anyone for his death in a freak accident at cricket training
‘I thought I would never get back there, but Benny would have wanted that because he loved the game.’
Ben died from an intracranial haemorrhage caused by a shocking injury to the left side of his neck.
The fatal ball was thrown by one of his teammates using a ‘cricket thrower’ which is a training tool used to throw practice balls to batters in the nets.
Jace told the ABC he knew his son was going to die from his injury after his brother-in-law rang him to tell him he had been hit and he had to get down to the nets right away.
‘So I just get out and I’m just yelling, ‘can someone tell me what’s going on?’ And I could just feel the looks on all the players and that,’ Jace said.
‘I just walked around the ambulance to the nets and I sort of got about just before the bowling mark at the end of the [nets] and I could just see him, they were working on him.
‘I knew straight away that he wasn’t there. I knew he’d gone straight away.’
The medical team found a pulse, which Jace said resulted in the the family being able to spend a few more days with Ben in the Monash Children’s Hospital as his mother Tracey hoped for a miracle.
Ben’s father Jace (left) returned to the nets where his son died to lay down his gear
Jace Austin kisses a rose on his son Ben’s coffin during his funeral at Junction Oval
‘I just kept on thinking, as a mum does, there’s hope, there’s hope, there’s hope,’ Tracey Austin told the ABC’s 7.30.
But reality soon set in after doctors told Jace and Tracey that there was nothing they could do for their son who was brain-dead.
Tracey says she can still feel her son’s presence in the family home every day when she sees his trophies on display and pictures on the walls.
The tragedy followed the death of Test cricketer Phillip Hughes in 2014, who was also struck in the neck by a ball while batting in a Sheffield Shield game for South Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
Ben was a keen Aussie rules player who took up boundary umpiring while also looking to one day run a marathon.
He wanted to be a PE teacher after he finished high school and had completed some work experience at a primary school shortly before his death.
‘I could talk about him all day,’ Tracey said.
‘We need to talk about him and we sit down at the table at night and the first thing, I’d like someone to say, is something about him, just a memory, and then we will include everybody else.’
Teammates and friends paid tribute to Ben at the nets where he died last October
Ben died in similar circumstances to Test player Phil Hughes who was killed when hit in the neck in a Sheffield Shield game in 2014
The Austin family have stated from the beginning that Ben’s death was a tragic accident and that no-one was to blame, and they still maintain that view.
They have supported the 15-year-old who sent down the ball that hit him in the neck and continue to do so.
‘We check in with him regularly just to see how he’s going. And he seems to be going okay,’ Tracey said.
‘We got him to go to the hospital…he didn’t want to come.
‘I said, ‘no, mate, you’ve got to come’. And we just hugged him and said, it wasn’t your fault.’
The family revealed they gave the teenager their son’s cricket bat to use knowing Ben would never have blamed him for his death.
The helmet Ben was wearing when he got hit didn’t have a neck guard on it, but it was unlikely it would have saved him anyway.
The new neck guards don’t protect the front, soft part of the neck, where Phil Hughes was hit.
They’re fixed to the back of the neck and do provide extra protection and it’s nearly impossible to protect the front of the neck.
An independent review into the death of Hughes found that wearing a more modern helmet and a neck guard would have been unlikely to prevent his death.
