Neil James Napier Hawke (1939-2000)

The South Australian and indeed the Australian sporting community has lost one of its greatest sons, with the passing of Neil Hawke. Hawke died on Christmas day at the age of 61, after long spells of illness in his last twenty years of his life.

Former Test leg spinner Terry Jenner was deeply saddened by the news and said his former South Australian teammate had "been a inspiration to a lot of us".

"His ability to go through barriers that kept coming in front of him was remarkable. That fact that he still kept his sense of humour and was able to absorb pain and press forward was an inspiration to us all."

"Neil Hawke will always be mentioned with the names of Victor York Richardson, Eric Freeman, Barrie Robran and Lindsay Head as one of the great all-round South Australian sportsmen," said current South Australian selector and former veteran of 107 Sheffield Shield matches, Neil Dansie.

"He was one of the best team men I played with and one of the best swing bowlers I ever played with or against."

Dansie roomed with Hawke on many occasions and said that he "never had an enemy in the world" and that he "never complained at all during his times of illness particularly in the last year or so".

Hawke, one of very few players to represent three states, came into the West Australian team in the season of 1959-60 but found it hard to command a regular place in the side. In the following season, he made the move over to South Australia and immediately became a valued member of the team playing in the winning South Australian Shield team of 1963-64.

He made his Test match debut in the fifth and final game of the 1962-63 series against England at Sydney and went on to play 27 Tests for Australia, taking 91 wickets at 29.41.

He was also a very accomplished footballer in South Australia and Western Australia and, as a journalist, later wrote for The News and The Sunday Mail. He also worked as a television broadcaster on Sheffield Shield matches for Channel Nine.

As a Test cricketer, Hawke's efforts weren't restricted purely to bowling. He made important contributions with the bat and, in particular, will be remembered for scoring a vital 37 during a partnership of 105 for the eighth wicket with Peter Burge in the 1964 Leeds Test. The stand proved crucial, helping Australia recover from a scoreline of 7/178 (in reply to England's 268) and assisting it to the only result of the series.

He finished that series with eighteen wickets at 27.55 (including 6/47 at The Oval) and later collected another twenty-four wickets at 21.83 on tour in West Indies in 1965 on pitches far from suited to his type of bowling. His Test best with the willow came in the opening match of that series where he made an unbeaten 45 in the first innings of the First Test at Kingston on a wicket described in Wisden 1966 as "a pitch of erratic bounce".

Towards the end of his first class career, "Hawkeye" spent many years in the confines of the Lancashire League. He played for Nelson in 1967 and 1969 and for East Lancashire from 1971 to 1974.

As a footballer, he started in the South Australian National Football League in 1957 and kicked fifteen goals from full forward in his third game with Port Adelaide. Amazingly, he was dropped two games later and, in 1958 and 1959, he played in Perth where he played in back-to-back premierships in the Western Australian Football League team East Perth. Hawke kicked 114 goals for that 1959 season, and many of those goals that he kicked would have been with the 'drop punt' style that he perfected during his career.

He returned to Adelaide for the 1961 season where he turned out for West Torrens and, in 1963, was a member of the famous South Australian team that defeated Victoria at the MCG - the Croweaters' first win over the Vics at the famous ground since 1926.

In 1980, he was seriously infected after bowel surgery and through the next two years survived many cardiac arrests, had a further thirty operations and was drip fed over that period. In 1990, Hawke suffered heart failure and later blood poisoning, central nervous system damage, cyrrhosis of the liver and in 1994 contracted hepatitis B and C.

Hawke was a great man and a wonderful friend to many and in a statement issued by Beverley, his wife of nineteen years, she said that "right to the end, Neil showed all the courage that had enabled him to survive over twenty years of life-threatening illnesses, dozens of operations and many months of hospitalisation, as he fought back from the brink of death time after time."

"He was a true champion as a cricketer and Australian Rules footballer, showing these qualities and more while he tackled head-on the setbacks of the last two decades."

"At the end, Neil knew that the time had come to be with his Lord."

On day two of the Boxing Day Test, Australian players wore black armbands as a mark of respect for Hawke.

A memorial service will be held on Friday 29 December in Adelaide after a private cremation.