Chappell hitting cancer for six

WITH the courage that was his trademark as a captain and batsman, Ian Chappell is staring down a more deadly foe — cancer.

The Test cricket legend has just completed five weeks of intense radiation therapy after he had skin cancers removed from his shoulder, neck and underarm.

Chappell, 75, will meet specialists for a full report on Monday, but at this stage the pathology has come back all clear and the commentary icon is putting his hand up to be part of Nine’s Ashes coverage next month. A lifetime of summers in the sun has taken its toll, and the master pragmatist says he has confronted his own mortality and has his head around the road ahead, whatever that might hold.

After having a squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) cut off the back of his shoulder in August last year, Chappell felt a lump under his left arm, and when it didn’t go away, he went to a doctor.

Specialists determined the cancer had spread to the two nearest lymph nodes and because of his good health, they wanted to be aggressive with their treatment and after undergoing surgery on his neck and armpit, Chappell was in at hospital for radiotherapy five days a week for five weeks.

“You get to 70 and you start to think, ‘Christ, it’s getting near the end now’. But I saw my mother, Jeanne, near the end and she’d come to grips with death, and that’s probably when I thought, ‘shit, this is something you need to deal with’,” Chappell said yesterday. COURAGE: