2100 glorious days. RIP Phillip Joel Hughes

The left-handed batsman may not have been the most talented player in Australia, but he was surely the most loved one

KARACHI: On February 26, 2009, cap 408 took guard for Australia for the first time against South Africa at Johannesburg. Lean of frame and short of height, the left hander stood slightly bent as Dale Steyn steamed in. The fourth ball he faced in international cricket was a bouncer, and he gloved it to Mark Boucher. Out for nought in the first over, cap 408 walked back.

The South Africans thought they had found a weakness and they targeted him with the bouncer again when he came out to bat in the second innings. But the ‘boy from the country’ was sure to fight back, he always did. 75, 115 and 160 followed in the next three innings as he became the youngest player to score centuries in both innings of a Test. Cap 408, or Phillip Hughes, had answered that bouncer in style and he would continue to do so again and again.

Until, exactly 2100 days later, on November 27, 2014. Now, there would be no reply, no more of that trademark defiance.

When the red Kookaburra drew blood in the Sheffield Shield match between New South Wales and South Australia from a Sean Abbott bouncer, Hughes fell to the floor unconscious. The ball had smashed into his vertebral artery, a blow that would have killed a man instantly; Hughes battled on for almost three days but as everyone waited by his side, desperate for a reply, none was forthcoming.

When his death was announced, the shock reverberated throughout the globe and the cricketing world stood still. In the UAE, the last country where Hughes made his last tour, play between Pakistan and New Zealand was suspended for the day. A picture of him, smiling, adorned the large electronic scoreboard. More than 10,000 kilometres away, in the South Australia ground that Hughes called home, were simply written the words ‘Vale Phillip Hughes 1988-2014’.

Australia captain Michael Clarke refused to look up from the letter from Hughes' family that he was reading out of, surely drenched in sweat and tears, unable to face the reporters in front of him. Clarke had famously predicted that Hughes would go on to play a hundred Tests, but that journey was cruelly cut short on just 26. Fighting back tears, his voice shaking, Clarke said only a few words about Hughes, any more and he would have broken down, but at the end of it, Clarke said what all of cricket was thinking, “We love you”.

Others also talked of Hughes the man; humble, modest and hardworking. There was little mention of Hughes the player; defiant, stylish and precociously talented. And be sure of it, he was one hell of a player. Hughes was hoping to don the baggy green once again against India in the first Test, a match that may now be postponed as Australia comes to terms with losing one of its favourite sons.

His death puts it all into perspective. Hughes was more than just a left-handed opener; he was Ricky Ponting’s student, he was Clarke’s friend, he was Mathew Hayden’s replacement, he was 25.

Phillip Joel Hughes may not have been the most talented player in Australia, but he was surely the most loved one. In his first innings, Hughes had lasted only a minute but in his final one, he shall live on in our memories, forever.

 

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