Ian Redpath died on December 1, 2024, aged 83. An excellent opening batter, he played 66 Test matches and five ODIs between 1963/64 and 1975/76. He was remembered in the 2025 edition of the Wisden Almanack.
REDPATH, IAN RITCHIE, MBE, who died on December 1, aged 83, was a dependable batsman who often assumed the anchor role while more adventurous players hit out in the successful Australian teams of the 1960s and ’70s. Australian journalist Gideon Haigh (also from the port city of Geelong) wrote: “I remember him jokingly contrasting himself to Doug Walters – how Doug approached Tests like club games, while he approached club games like Tests.”
Redpath attended Geelong College, whose distinguished old boys include the former Test captain Lindsay Hassett, 1950s mystery spinner Jack Iverson, and Redpath’s frequent team-mate Paul Sheahan. When he moved into adult cricket, initially with South Melbourne, Redpath was not an immediate success, and three Sheffield Shield outings as a 20-year-old in 1961/62 produced a highest score of 14. But he broke through the following season after being promoted to open with Bill Lawry, turning his maiden century – against Queensland at the MCG – into 261, as Victoria emphatically ended New South Wales’s run of nine titles.
Good form next summer propelled Redpath into the selectors’ thoughts, and he was called up for the second Test against South Africa at Adelaide in January 1964 after an injury to Norm O’Neill. He was the last man to play for Australia without being paid, forgoing his match fee in order to retain his amateur status for Aussie Rules football. Riding his luck – “I survived three comparatively easy chances” – Redpath put on 219 with Lawry, before falling for 97. He was soon brought down to earth, being left out of the next Test when O’Neill returned. Barry Shepherd, seen as Redpath’s main rival for a place on the forthcoming tour of England, told him: “You can’t get into any trouble as twelfth man.” He was right: when the Ashes party were announced, Redpath was in, while Shepherd missed out after two failures in the fifth Test. Amateur status was now forgotten: “Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to eat.”
Redpath’s first tour of England was a qualified success, with 1,075 runs at 32 overall. But there was a solitary half-century in the Tests, and he was called for throwing his medium-pacers against Glamorgan. He missed the following year’s tour of the West Indies, then played only once in the home Ashes of 1965/66, but did end that season strongly for Victoria. It won him a recall for the trip to South Africa, where he started with innings of 139 not out and 154. He ended the trip in uncharacteristic fashion, taking 32 off an over from Orange Free State’s Neil Rosendorff. Redpath played in all five Tests there, as he did in England in 1968, by which time his lack of a Test century was attracting comment.
Redpath had feared the chop after making only 159 runs in the first four home Tests against West Indies in 1968/69, which included being run out while backing up by Charlie Griffith in Adelaide. Things got worse with a first-innings duck at Sydney, but 132 in the second removed the monkey from his back. It was his 49th innings, in his 28th Test: among Australian batsmen, only Bob Simpson (52 and 30) took longer. It wasn’t all plain sailing, though: “I had to survive two or three bouncers an over from Hall and Griffith, and two warnings. Wes caught me out of my crease when I was 18, and Charlie caught me backing up too soon when I was on 64. Instead of running me out, all he did was point at my feet and tell me: ‘Don’t do that again, man.’ Perhaps he felt sorry for me – he’d already raised lumps on my left side and left shoulder.”
Another important century followed in the first Test played in Perth, during the 1970/71 Ashes. Now down the order, with Keith Stackpole opening, Redpath made 171 and put on 219 with debutant Greg Chappell, who scored a century of his own. But a lean spell cost him his place, and he missed the 1972 Ashes tour; his employer asked about his future plans. Redpath wasn’t so sure, and fought his way back. He made a century against Pakistan at Melbourne in December 1972, and the following season carried his bat for 159 in a big win over New Zealand in Auckland. That meant he was inked in for the 1974/75 Ashes, where apart from his batting – 472 runs at 43, with a century (and another big stand with Greg Chappell) at Sydney – Redpath formed part of perhaps the most sticky-fingered of all slip cordons, which clung on to tracer-bullet edges off Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson. It helped, thought Redpath, that “our chaps were expecting catches, possibly because the English were playing at balls they shouldn’t”. The captain, Ian Chappell, thought Redpath enjoyed this phase of his career the most: “The Desperate Dozen was his nickname for the players, and he was a great contributor to the team’s success.”
By now, Redpath had set up a shop selling antiques back in Geelong, and the Australian board’s refusal to fund a manager for his time away meant he missed the 1975 tour of England, which included the first men’s World Cup and four Tests. But he was back for one last hurrah when the West Indians arrived in Australia later in the year. It proved quite a farewell: he signed off with three centuries in his last four matches, while in Adelaide – the 65th of his 66 Tests – he finally hit a six, after a record 4,460 runs without one. According to Frank Tyson, he “advanced down the pitch to loft Lance Gibbs for six, over mid-wicket, into a members’ stand which was probably as surprised as the batsman himself”. Redpath was so carried away that he soon hoisted seamer Vanburn Holder for another six – “a magnificent full-blooded drive over mid-wicket,” said Tyson. Redpath returned to the antiques shop, but was coaxed out of retirement by a contract with Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket. It earned him a line in “C’mon Aussie C’mon”, WSC’s promotional song: “Redpath, it’s good to see ya back.” But he wasn’t back for long in their first season of 1977/78, having snapped his Achilles tendon. He did make two WSC Supertest appearances the following summer, failing to reach double figures. After that, it really was back to the antiques, apart from a spell coaching Victoria.
Redpath had a self-deprecating sense of humour. When Haigh produced a copy of his 1976 autobiography, Always Reddy, for signature, the subject smilingly described it as “a fishing book disguised as a cricket book”, as it contained several pictures of successful angling adventures. When he finally managed that Test six, he flexed his biceps to the Adelaide crowd, knowing they would be hard pressed to spot any muscle on his legendarily lean physique. And a few months before his death, on learning the scoreboard at Geelong’s Kardinia Park was to be named after him, Redpath observed: “Not bad for a bloke who could hardly make it move.”
But the light-hearted approach masked a fierce competitor. In 1970/71, he had swayed out of the way of John Snow’s many bouncers, then sworn cheerfully at him, while Ian Chappell recalled an incident after the board secretary Alan Barnes had dismissed the team’s requests for better pay by saying 500,000 people would play for Australia for nothing. Chappell returned after a Test toss to find a furious Redpath pinning Barnes up against the dressing-room wall, and growling: “You bloody idiot. Of course there are 500,000 out there who would play for nothing, but how bloody good would the team be?” And Greg Chappell summed him up for The Sydney Morning Herald: “Redders didn’t drink or smoke, but if we won a Test he would have a shandy and a cigarette to celebrate. All of us who played for Australia would have died for the Baggy Green cap. But along with Rod Marsh, Red was one who would have killed for it, so much did he hate losing.”
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