Fighting To Keep Sight

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31061, 17 May 1966, Page 18

Fighting To Keep Sight

(N.Z. Press Association)

WELLINGTON. The New Zealand cricket captain, B. W. Sinclair, has been fighting for the sight of his left eye.

Sinclair was told last Tuesday that the eye, which was hurt in a squash accident the previous week, was severely damaged and that no confident hope could be given that it would recover completely. At that stage Sinclair, with 10 stitches above the eye and round the top of the nose, had little sight in the eye.

“Till then I had been inclined to accept the fact that I had a damaged eye but had discarded any thought that it might be so serious that the sight would be impaired permanently,” he said. “I had been joking around, saying I'd bat. left-handed if necessary but never really contemplating that I might be faced with disability,” he said.

“After I had absorbed the implications of the position I had some pretty dark thoughts. My cricket could, to all intents and purposes, be finished. My whole life could be changed. "I lay on my back. My

eyes were covered again. I decided to fight. I remembered reading of the great fight Pat Walsh put up to play Rugby again after the specialists said he was washed up with his knee injury.

“It was then that I decided 1 would see through the eye again. 1 started to fight mentally. The sight started to improve.” Now except for haziness caused by haemorrhage his vision is normal, although he has a slight field defect. The edge of the iris is torn where it attaches to the eyeball under the upper lid but this is regarded as a minor problem. “It is considered certain

that I will have virtually 100 per cent vision in the eye,” he said.

Sinclair’s eye was gashed when his opponent’s racket caught him on the followthrough. Dr. W. J. Treadwell, who was the medical officer with the New Zealand cricket team in India and Pakistan last year, was at the squash centre. Sinclair suggested a few [stitches and a trip home to ! bed. Dr. Treadwell insisted that he go to hospital. Sinclair is likely to be in hospital another two days. He will go to England in September to play for the World XI.