Cricket Australia offers support to cricketing community after 17-year-old’s fatal accident

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Flowers, cricket bats and personal messages are being left at the nets where a teenage cricketer faced a fatal accident in Melbourne's east earlier this week. The 17-year-old boy was struck in the neck by a cricket ball on Tuesday and died this morning. Chair of Cricket Australia Mike Baird and Cricket Victoria’s CEO Nick Cummins spoke a short time ago on the accident.

Transcript

00:00Well there's some days where your heart is broken and today is one of them.

00:09The tragic circumstances of being at Fern Tree Gully are circumstances that are going

00:14to be felt across the country. Cricket is a sport that brings people together, communities

00:20together. It's also one that feels very deeply an incident such as we've seen.

00:27It's hard to put words on it. What we want to say is that we are doing everything we can

00:33to support the family, the club and all those impacted by this tragic news.

00:39Clearly there are things that we have to learn from this but right now we are concerned about

00:46the family and trying to support them in every way.

00:50Days like today remind you how closely connected the cricket community is.

00:54It's not a great way to find out just how much cricket means to people and how much a

00:59young cricketer meant to so many Victorians. We're absolutely devastated on behalf of the

01:04family, on behalf of the Fern Tree Gully Cricket Club and more broadly the Victorian

01:09cricket community. We are doing everything we can to support not just the family of

01:14young Ben but also those at the club and Ben played for a number of clubs to ensure that

01:21they have the counselling and their support not just today but well into the future as this

01:26is something that will stay with our community for some time.

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