Alec now wears an oxygen cylinder on his back allowing him to continue playing the game he loves
By Sean O’Neil
BBC Scotland
Alec Steele is 82 and has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, but he is determined to carry on playing cricket, even with an oxygen tank strapped to his back.
Alec has idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis – a disease that destroys lung function and comes with a life expectancy of between one and five years.
But three years after his diagnosis, the former Scotland international is back keeping wicket in Dundee.
“You must have a positive attitude,” he says.
“I said to myself, although I’ve been told it’s a terminal illness I am going to do my level best to get myself back into playing cricket.
“I think the most important thing that came over me was to never, ever, give up.”
Alec says he found the first six months following his diagnosis extremely difficult, both on his body and spirit.
With his lung function as low as 30%, moving around and getting upstairs was a struggle.
But while attending the palliative care unit at Royal Victoria Hospital in Dundee, he informed staff that he wanted to get in shape to play one last game.
Alec Steele is back playing cricket despite his illness
Following months of hard work in recovery and rehabilitation, Alec achieved his dream in a match at St Andrews last year.
He says: “I had the great privilege of walking over the boundary rope to go onto the cricket pitch.
“And honestly, I think it is the most wonderful experience I think I’ve had for a long time.
“The thing that game taught me was that I could catch a ball and I could do a little bit of wicket keeping.”
Since that first game, Alec has not looked back.
The 82-year-old is now finishing up his second season playing with the aid of his oxygen tank – and he is determined he’ll be at the stump next spring too.
“If I survive, wild horses won’t keep me away,” he says.
Alec is now finishing up his second season playing with the aid of his oxygen tank
Perhaps it is no surprise that Alec has surpassed all expectations on his recovery and returned to the sport.
This is a man who played league cricket until he was 64 for Forfarshire Cricket Club.
In his international career, he batted at famous grounds like Lords and The Oval, passing up the chance to play the county game in England to concentrate on his other career as an architect.
And he tells a story of stumping out cricket great Viv Richards only for the umpire to look the other way.
But while cricket has been huge part of his life, Alec now wants to use his story to raise awareness of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
He says he had never heard of the illness before his diagnosis, calling it a “horrible disease”.
It has left him needing oxygen between 16 and 24 hours a day and it can take him days to recover from matches.
Despite this, Alec doesn’t like to focus on the downsides – if a negative thought enters his mind he pushes it away.
In his first match at St Andrews he managed 10 overs of cricket, in his most recent match on Sunday he managed 40.
“When you come off the pitch, you’ve won the battle,” he says.
