Donald Beard, South Australian Cricket Association 'Doc's' big moment at Test; also Korea/Vietnam legend

South Australian Cricket Association medical officer Dr Donald Beard with Les Favell and Don Bradman, at Favell's testimonial match in 1987.
Image courtesy South Australian Cricket Association 

Millions of Australians saw a tall doctor rush out to the middle of the Melbourne Cricket Ground during the 1977 Centenary cricket Test match to tend to Australian batsman Rick McCosker who’d been hit in the face by a bouncer from English bowler Bob Willis.

The doctor was Donald Beard, known to generations of South Australian cricketers as “the Doc” as South Australian Cricket Association’s medical officer. Australian captain and former South Australian Greg Chappell certainly knew to call on Beard when the Melbourne Cricket Ground duty doctor was elsewhere attending a suspected heart attack in the stands.

“The Doc” had made a spur-of-the-moment decision to travel to Melbourne to watch the match’s second innings, telling the superintendent of the Modbury Hospital, in Adelaide’s northeast suburbs, that he had to take leave to go to a meeting. That superintendent was having a cup tea at Modbury Hospital and watching television when he saw Beard on the field. In his defence, Beard said: “Well, the meeting was the meeting between Australia and England.”

Don Bradman introduced Test spinner Ashley Mallett, who had a dislocated finger, to his friend Don Beard in 1967. A friendship with Mallett also developed leading to the spinner _ also an author and journalist – writing a book about Beard’s life, The Diggers’ Doctor, published by Adelaide’s Wakefield Press.

Besides his deep involvement in cricket, including playing nearly 200 games as a fast bowler with Adelaide's Sturt district club, Beard had three terms of duty as an Australian army regimental medical officer, first during the Allied occupation of Japan, then as a legendary battlefield surgeon in the Korean War and, years later, as part of the Australian forces fighting in Vietnam. Beard's goal from his 14 months in Japan was to save money to do his surgical training in London. That goal was assisted by United States general Douglas MacArthur’s edict against fraternising with the Japanese.

Beard went to South Korea because “you do what you’re told. That’s one thing about the army, you don’t have to think. In 1968, Beard answered the army’s desperate need of surgeons and anaesthetists in Vietnam, stationed at the first Australian field hospital in Vung Tao. That’s where Beard removed a bullet from the head of soldier who, it turned out, he had assessed for the same injury in Korea 17 years before.