November 25, 2014

PL on cricket's darkest day

It was the cut shots that stood out, of course. Phillip had a commanding drive, but it was the shots through square shone brightest. His square cuts that day had a special quality. In one of Hillyard’s photographs, Hughes is reclining like a limbo dancer, so low that his knee kisses the pitch. His helmet at stump height, his eyes in line with the ball. It would be enough to convince selectors that Hughes was back to his eccentric brilliant best. When he was in these moods, swatting them off middle stump, you knew what Andre Nel meant when he said there were times there was no where to bowl to this young man. You shouldn’t have been able to play that shot to that ball. He was finely honed and fiercely focused, again, after losing his way for a time, but there’s a selector here that day in November and this innings progress has not passed unnoticed.

I’d seen all but two of his 26 Test matches and a few of his first class games too. Been there in Newcastle when he’d won his place in the squad for South Africa and there when he’d made his debut. We’d stood toe to toe the night before, harsh African sun streaming through a hotel window, turning everyone and everything in the room to silhouette. I’d dropped into his parents room hoping to exchange numbers ahead of his first innings. Just in case the papers wanted a bit of colour - I was filling in for the News Corp tabloids as well as doing The Australian’s coverage. Phillip, already his family’s protector, was not happy.  We got past that pretty quick. He learned to trust me and I grew fond of him. Everyone who knew him grew fond of him.

Seeing him bring up that debut century was unforgettable, a buzz, but there was a sneaky little innings in Wellington when he came in to replace the injured Shane Watson that I cherish.  He’d seemed to abandon all care as he and Katich set about chasing 105 runs to win in the last innings of that match. There was a gale blowing that day. Covers lifted groundsman in the air. The heavy roller was propelled from its resting place by the strength of the winds.  Having played and missed at a few early, he threw caution to the wind and set about smashing the ball to all parts.  When the total was reached he was 86no from 75 deliveries while Katich was just 18. He’d scored 81% of the runs, the highest proportion of anybody in a Test innings.

Scoring disproportionately was something he did. He seemed to thrive in the most difficult of conditions. In December 2008 he’d batted for NSW against Tasmania on a green top at Bellerive. Figuring the best mode of defence was attack, he went on to score 201 of the Blues’ 345 in that match. His was the largest contribution by an individual to a team total, outstripping even Bradman as he left Usman Khawaja, Ed Cowan, Steve Smith, Moises Henriques in his wake. I wrote about it in the book Malcolm Knox and I did on his life. “We were watching Hughesy and saying ‘I don’t know what is going on here,” Khawaja remembered. “They couldn’t stop him and didn’t know how to stop him. He got smashed in the helmet by (Brett) Geeves and then he slogged the next ball through mid-wicket for four. I loved his bravado.”  Cowan was similarly impressed. “It wasn’t just that he got them, he got them at a clip. Everyone was playing forward defences and nicking them. He’d have seen five slips and two gullies and thought, ‘Bugger it, I’ll go for them’. Conditions were irrelevant to him. A total of 17 wickets fell the first day and just 213 runs were scored - 93 of them by Phillip. Geeves and the Tasmanians were frustrated by his counterintuitive approach and stumped by his unorthodoxy, complaining that he was playing good length deliveries behind square off the front foot. “I had no answers,” the Tasmanian bowler said, “Didn’t matter what I did. Round the wicket, over the wicket … he was too good”.    Just 20 years of age, they figured they’d at least unsettle him with their sledges, but Hughes loved a scrap and told his cousin later he often had to look away to hide the smile on his face when they abused him.  In his first Test a gang of bullying South Africans had surrounded him, alarming Katich who came down to protect the young player.

The gritty opener pushed his way through the opposition pack where he discovered a grinning Hughes’. “How good is this?” he said to his NSW skipper. 

Recently he’d been out of the side but still in the tour group. We’d had a couple of beers one night in Port Elizabeth, he was a long way from the farm life he loved, but close enough to the game and people he loved to be in good spirit. He’d call home every day. And earlier this year I’d caught him drinking decaffeinated coffee in a garden bar in the UAE. He was, he explained, leaving nothing to chance in his efforts to get back into the team, even if it meant sipping what he called “shit flavoured milk” while everyone else drank Belgian beers. On the same trip I’d whispered to him that I thought he’d be selected for the next Test. He said he hoped he wasn’t because for him to make the side Alex Doolan would have to be dropped and he loved “Dools”. It was an extraordinary thing for a competitive sportsman to say.

Just after 2.23pm on 25 November 2014, my phone rang in the press box, it was Wally Mason, the sports editor at The Australian. The paper’s soccer writer, Ray Gatt, had been watching the live stream in the office and told him that Hughes had been hit. The call from work seemed like an intrusion. The Blues players, his batting partner Tom Cooper and the umpries were gathered around Phillip’s fallen frame at the Randwick end of the ground. They were doing their best but the situation was already beyond them. They called for help like men hoping to be rescued from an island. Faces turned anxiously, hopefully, toward the dressing rooms. It was Peter Nevill who realised he wasn’t breathing.