Australian Hall of Famer Ian Redpath passes away aged 83

An antiques shop owner who took to painting water colours later in life, Ian Redpath could be characterised as an unlikely renaissance figure to emerge from perhaps the most hard-nosed era of Australian Test cricket.

But Redpath, who died aged 83, was also a ferociously competitive and unrelentingly obdurate top-order batter whose former national captain Greg Chappell described as one of only two players (alongside the late Rod Marsh) who might conceivably 'kill' to secure a place in the Australian team.

"I liked a contest," Redpath once reflected in his endearingly understated manner.

Redpath's celebrated contribution to his chosen sport – which saw him inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 2023 – was a career in two distinct parts.

Having fought his way into an established Test batting line-up in 1964 where he came within a well-timed stroke of posting a century on debut, he found himself in and out of the starting XI, up and down the batting order.

However, once he finally posted that three-figure score he became an increasingly indispensable member of resurgent teams under Ian and Greg Chappell and was arguably in the best form of his international tenure when he played his final Test in 1976, aged 34.

Redpath, who represented his country in 66 Tests and five one-day internationals (including the historic first at the MCG in 1971), was a born and bred boy from Geelong on Melbourne's Bellarine Peninsula.

He was educated at Newtown State School, then Geelong College (also the alma mater of former Australia Test captain Lindsay Hassett) and he excelled at football, tennis and athletics in addition to captaining the College's cricket first XI from 1956-58.

His first fleeting brush with Test cricket came in 1958 when he took a catch to dismiss Hassett, who was playing in a College Old Boys team in the annual match against the firsts.

Redpath's bigger break came when Bob Price, a committee member for influential grade club South Melbourne, saw the wiry right-hander score a half-century for Geelong College in 1958 and convinced the teenager to try his luck in the bigger city.

"If he’d seen me in the previous three games, when I didn’t get to 20, I wouldn’t have been invited," Redpath would later deadpan.

He made his way from third grade to the firsts at South, and was selected for Victoria's Sheffield Shield game against South Australia either side of new year in 1961-62 where he scored 2 and 7 (dismissed by West Indies great Garfield Sobers) after which he was promptly dropped.

Fortune smiled when he was recalled for a Shield match against Test-strength New South Wales the following summer, in which rival fast bowler Alan Davidson broke down after just four overs and Redpath was left to combat the Blues' spinners.

“I danced down the wicket to Richie (Benaud), played a beautiful cover drive which went between the keeper and Bobby Simpson at first slip," he recalled of the 40 he scored in Victoria's second innings aided, by what he claims the only missed slips catch of Simpson's career.

Having reached 50 in each of his next three Shield appearances, out of nowhere he peeled off a remarkable 261 against a Queensland attack led by legendary Caribbean quick Wes Hall and suddenly found himself in Test reckoning.

Within a year he was named for the second Test of the 1963-64 summer against South Africa where his maiden innings yielded 97 in an opening stand of 177 alongside Victoria teammate Bill Lawry, and an international career seemingly beckoned.

However, he was axed for the following Test to allow for the return of Norm O'Neill and his revolving door of national selection had begun.

Redpath also opted not to accept the admittedly meagre match payments being offered to players in the 1960s in order to ensure he could retain his status as an amateur footballer, a privilege he was forced to surrender when selected for the 1964 Ashes tour.

Over ensuing years, Redpath's inability to recapture the productivity of his Test debut meant he could not secure a regular berth in the Test team despite impressing on the 1966-67 tour to South Africa when rival skipper Trevor Goddard described his batting as being "the most technically perfect in the world".

A score of 92 in the fourth Ashes Test of 1968 at Leeds provided the second-most significant highlight of that tour after meeting his future wife, Christine, but it was the following home series against West Indies that proved pivotal.

In the second innings of the fourth Test at Adelaide Oval, Redpath was run out by firebrand West Indies quick Charlie Griffiths when backing up too far at the non-striker's end, without the then-traditional warning from the bowler.

Redpath then bagged a duck in the first innings of the next match at the SCG (again falling to Sobers), but broke his five-year drought by scoring his maiden century in the second innings of his 28th Test.

Among Australia's specialist Test batters, only Simpson (52) completed more innings than the 49 it took Redpath to reach triple figures in Tests.

Having averaged barely 36 with a solitary hundred in the first half of his 66-Test career, Redpath then averaged just above 50 in the second half from 1970 including seven hundreds with a career-high 171 against England at Perth in November 1970.

That game also heralded Greg Chappell's arrival at Test level with a century on debut, a feat he largely attributed to the courage and character Redpath showed in shielding the novice from rival quick John Snow who had reduced Australia to 3-17.

Redpath faced all but two deliveries from Snow as he sent down in a fiery five-over spell, during which the senior partner was bombarded by bouncers he adroitly avoided before offering curt advice to the Englishman he habitually followed-through to be in the batters' face.

"I liked bowling to him the least," Snow said later of Redpath who reassured Chappell throughout their 219-run partnership that the more Snow became upset the less effective his bowling became.

"He was a nuisance batsman."

Despite being overlooked for the 1972 Ashes tour as selectors opted for younger blood, Redpath returned to the Test line-up and on the 1973-74 tour to New Zealand became just the sixth Australia player to carry his bat through a completed innings.

When Australia regained the Ashes in 1974-75, Redpath was skipper Ian Chappell's deputy, a position he retained when Chappell's younger brother Greg took over the captaincy against West Indies the next home summer.

In between those epochal series, Redpath opted out of the 1975 tour to England for the inaugural one-day World Cup and subsequent Ashes campaign, noting he could no longer afford to neglect the antiques business he had established in Geelong with Christine.

He then ended his Test tenure with a flourish in his final season of 1975-76.

Having not hit a six in his preceding 64 Test outings, Redpath launched his first – a heave over mid-wicket and into the Adelaide Oval members' enclosure off record-breaking West Indies spinner, Lance Gibbs – in his penultimate match.

To prove it was no fluke, he repeated the stroke soon after against seamer Vanburn Holder to the opposite side of the ground on his way to posting 103.

Although often characterised as a resolute, occasionally dour opener, Redpath possessed an array of strokes as shown in a tour match against Orange Free State on Australia's otherwise forgettable 1970 tour to South Africa.

The 32 runs he clubbed from a six-ball over from medium-pacer Neil Rosendorff (6, 6, 6, 6, 4, 4) remains the record for the highest score by an Australia batter from a single first-class over.

In his final six Test innings, Redpath returned scores of 102, 9, 25, 28, 103, 65, 101 and 70 as an opener against a West Indies attack led by Andy Roberts and Michael Holding, prompting many to suggest he had walked away from international cricket in his prime.

No Australia Test opener can match Redpath's average of 66.63 after reaching age 34, significantly superior to fellow veterans Simon Katich (49.92), Justin Langer (49.90) and Usman Khawaja (49.49) at the same stage of their lengthy careers.

It took an extraordinary event to lure Redpath back to top-level cricket two years later.

Even though Kerry Packer was initially reluctant to offer the then 36-year-old a deal with World Series Cricket, the fiercely loyal Ian Chappell successfully lobbied for his mate's inclusion.

"It was adventurous and lucrative for cricket," Redpath later recalled of the breakaway movement that paved the way for the sport's full professionalism.

"I looked at it as my superannuation payout, even though the players who joined up were treated worse than Ned Kelly by a lot of people opposed to World Series."

Among those who turned on the rebels was South Melbourne cricket club which disowned their former product until decades later, when he was appointed coach of Victoria's men's team.

Redpath's time with WSC was brief.

In an early match at VFL Park he showed he had lost little of his late-career bravado by belting sixes off West Indies spinner Albert Padmore, but soon after snapped his achilles tendon after jumping in the air to celebrate an Australia wicket.

Packer then confirmed the veteran would be paid for the full season despite being unable to play.

Redpath returned towards the end of the second and final WSC summer 1978-79, providing a stark counter point against the marauding West Indies pace battery by scoring nine in more than two hours to provide support for the more combative David Hookes at the other end.

"Go back to your antique shop you old goat," Hookes reputedly teased his more senior batting partner good naturedly at one stage during their defiance.

"You shouldn't be out here."

Redpath had captained Victoria in his final two seasons from 1974-76, and finished with almost 15,000 first class runs at 41.99 with 32 centuries.

In addition to his senior coaching role with Victoria, he remained a regular and beloved presence at Geelong Cricket Club in the city where he continued to run his antiques shop on Shannon Road.

In addition to the woodwork restoration skills he developed and the painting hobby he took up, Redpath was an enthusiastic cyclist, golfer, tennis player and occasional angler.

Earlier this year, he was presented with an honorary permit that restored his eligibility to play amateur football after a ban that had stretched for 60 years.

And at a special ceremony at Kardinia Park last month, he was guest of honour alongside long-time teammates including Paul Sheahan and Jim Higgs at the unveiling of Geelong Cricket Club's Ian Redpath Scoreboard.

Due to Redpath's failing health the occasion was fast-tracked so he could make one final trip to the middle on a day that celebrated one of the city's, the state's, and the nation's most fondly remembered cricketers.