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THE Bathurst cricket community is in shock after popular City Colts veteran Chris Duke died after suffering a heart attack during his team’s third grade match with Bushrangers on Saturday at Raglan.
Duke, a father of three children and also a fixture in the City Colts Soccer Club in the past, was treated by fellow players and later paramedics before being transferred to Bathurst Base Hospital where he died soon after.
It is the second time in four seasons that a Bathurst player has suffered a heart attack after Panorama City Hotel’s Terry Nicholson collapsed in January, 2013.
He was kept alive by Bushrangers pair Col Martin and Andrew Hearne, who administered CPR.
A number of Bushrangers players from that day were on the field again on Saturday, including Martin who once more rushed to help.
Unfortunately the outcome was a distressing one for everyone present.
“As far as I understand it, Chris felt ill while he was on the field and left to lie down. He tried to get up and hop in his chair but didn’t make it,” Bathurst District Cricket Association president Campbell Graham said.
“A heap of players from both sides rushed to help. Col Martin was on the spot again and an ambulance arrived soon after but having made it to hospital, Chris died not long after getting there.
“It is just a tragedy, something that will impact a lot of people. Chris was an incredibly popular guy, one of the genuine good guys from the local cricket scene and he’s going to be greatly missed.”
Colts are renowned as a tight-knit club, and Duke has been a part of it for longer than most having played in every grade they have entered.
First grade captain Daniel Casey, who rushed to the scene as soon as he could with his team having a bye, was struggling to put into words the sort of impact the loss will have on his clubmates.
“I met up with a few of the guys at the Dudley Hotel on Saturday night and they were struggling a bit. One of them went to tell a story about what happened at the start of the game and mentioned Dukey and then it kind of hit him, what had happened,” he said.
“They were trying to think of the good memories they had with him. A lot of the second grade boys will be really affected, he had some really close mates in that team. He was a good cricketer and just a really good bloke full stop.
“I can’t speak highly enough of all the players who tried to help him, the Bushrangers guys were just fantastic and were all doing their bit the whole way through it.
“He was close with a lot of the soccer players too, he coached plenty of them and was with the club for a long time. It feels very strange at the moment, it hasn’t quite sunk in yet.”
The Bathurst District side all wore black armbands yesterday in their Western Premier League match against Cowra as a mark of respect, and it is expected that the local sides will do the same this weekend.