Phillip Hughes
"The other star was a kid no one in South Africa had heard of - Phillip Hughes. The 20-year-old opener looked, technically and aesthetically, like a club No. 9. Maybe No. 10. Yet his idiosyncratic style earned him 415 runs in the series, and played a vital part in winning it. He will either threaten every batting record ever set, or fade quickly after a couple of years once bowlers work him out. It almost seemed as if he had started out with the idea of doing everything the opposite way round from the coaching manual - but those who had known him best and for longest were betting on 10,000 Test runs even before he had faced a ball. It's not how that matters, it's how many."
- Neil Manthorp in Wisden 2010 on Phillip Hughes's first Test series for Australia, in South Africa in early 2009.
Actually, Hughes's first Test innings, at Johannesburg, was a fourth-ball duck, but he fought back with 75 in the second innings, and in the next match, at Durban, he became the youngest player to hit two hundreds in a Test. Only three Australians had completed a Test century when younger than his 20 years and 98 days; one of them was Archie Jackson, who was to die of tuberculosis aged 23. Hughes lasted a little longer than that; he would have been 26 on Sunday. But, like Jackson, he's fated to be remembered as one of the players we lost too soon.
He didn't recapture the promise of that first series in South Africa; there was one more Test hundred, and another half-dozen fifties. His final total was a respectable 1,535 runs at 32 in 26 Tests, the last of them Australia's disastrous defeat at Lord's last year. But he was still a regular in the one-day side, and last played in a one-run win against Pakistan at Abu Dhabi last month.
England didn't really see the best of him, apart from an astonishing burst for Middlesex - three hundreds and two fifties in five innings - in 2009 as he warmed up for the Ashes. That form didn't carry over to the Tests that followed; he appeared in three series against England, all of which Australia lost, and managed a single half-century. He also played briefly for Hampshire and Worcestershire. But he averaged over 50 for both his states - he moved from his native New South Wales to South Australia in 2012 - and he scored a career-best 243 not out for Australia A against South Africa A in August, so it was entirely possible that he might have returned to the Test arena as a stronger, more mature batsman.
But all that ended on Monday: retired hurt, 63, after being hit on the neck by a bouncer from Sean Abbott at the SCG. He died at St Vincent's Hospital today. Abbott is 22, and made his international debut alongside Hughes in October, in that series against Pakistan. Like most of the New South Wales team, he had previously played with Hughes before his move to Adelaide; the accident was all the more distressing because both sides knew him so well, and his mother and sister were in the crowd. I read a moving account of how David Warner, who was fielding, stood guard as Hughes lay on the ground receiving treatment, while his batting partner Tom Cooper tenderly removed his pads.
The game was called off, and by the next day so were the other two Sheffield Shield matches in progress. Today, on hearing of Hughes's death, Pakistan and New Zealand suspended play in their current Test at Sharjah; it will resume tomorrow. Most of the time, talk about cricket as a family seems like sentimental cliche; on days like this, it's true.
The wave of sympathy for poor Sean Abbott has been good to see. I don't know what he will do, and it's too soon for him to decide. I keep thinking that this is where I came in, nearly forty years ago: the first incident in a cricket match which I remember was at the end of the Auckland Test of February 1975 when a bouncer from Peter Lever hit tail-end batsman Ewan Chatfield on the head. It was Bernie Thomas, the England physio, who saved his life when he realised Chatfield had swallowed his tongue and his heart briefly stopped. Chatfield was carried off on a stretcher, followed by the weeping Lever, but he was soon fine; that was his debut, and he went on to play another 42 Tests. There was a very good interview with Lever on Test Match Special yesterday. He said his first instinct was to give up cricket, and he probably would have done had Chatfield died. As it was, he refused to bowl bouncers for a while; he said it was Glenn Turner, the New Zealand batsman who also played for Worcestershire, who talked him round. Worcestershire were playing Lancashire, and Turner asked Lever "What's happened to your bouncer?" Lever said he just couldn't, after what had happened (Turner had also been in that Test), but Turner told him not to be silly and to bowl him a few bouncers. They can be lethal, but mostly they aren't.
It was that incident with Lever and Chatfield that really pulled me into cricket. Maybe it would have happened anyway; I dimly remember talk about England's problems with Lillee and Thomson earlier that winter. But it was the near-death that grabbed my attention - not the potential goriness of it, but the intensity of emotion it involved. When I first watched cricket that summer, Peter Lever was Lancashire's star bowler, and my favourite player: I can still recall his birthday and his best first-class bowling figures without thinking. Peter and Ewan were lucky. If you pray, pray for Phillip Hughes's family, and for Sean Abbott.
And Happy Lancashire Day.
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comments.
- Neil Manthorp in Wisden 2010 on Phillip Hughes's first Test series for Australia, in South Africa in early 2009.
Actually, Hughes's first Test innings, at Johannesburg, was a fourth-ball duck, but he fought back with 75 in the second innings, and in the next match, at Durban, he became the youngest player to hit two hundreds in a Test. Only three Australians had completed a Test century when younger than his 20 years and 98 days; one of them was Archie Jackson, who was to die of tuberculosis aged 23. Hughes lasted a little longer than that; he would have been 26 on Sunday. But, like Jackson, he's fated to be remembered as one of the players we lost too soon.
He didn't recapture the promise of that first series in South Africa; there was one more Test hundred, and another half-dozen fifties. His final total was a respectable 1,535 runs at 32 in 26 Tests, the last of them Australia's disastrous defeat at Lord's last year. But he was still a regular in the one-day side, and last played in a one-run win against Pakistan at Abu Dhabi last month.
England didn't really see the best of him, apart from an astonishing burst for Middlesex - three hundreds and two fifties in five innings - in 2009 as he warmed up for the Ashes. That form didn't carry over to the Tests that followed; he appeared in three series against England, all of which Australia lost, and managed a single half-century. He also played briefly for Hampshire and Worcestershire. But he averaged over 50 for both his states - he moved from his native New South Wales to South Australia in 2012 - and he scored a career-best 243 not out for Australia A against South Africa A in August, so it was entirely possible that he might have returned to the Test arena as a stronger, more mature batsman.
But all that ended on Monday: retired hurt, 63, after being hit on the neck by a bouncer from Sean Abbott at the SCG. He died at St Vincent's Hospital today. Abbott is 22, and made his international debut alongside Hughes in October, in that series against Pakistan. Like most of the New South Wales team, he had previously played with Hughes before his move to Adelaide; the accident was all the more distressing because both sides knew him so well, and his mother and sister were in the crowd. I read a moving account of how David Warner, who was fielding, stood guard as Hughes lay on the ground receiving treatment, while his batting partner Tom Cooper tenderly removed his pads.
The game was called off, and by the next day so were the other two Sheffield Shield matches in progress. Today, on hearing of Hughes's death, Pakistan and New Zealand suspended play in their current Test at Sharjah; it will resume tomorrow. Most of the time, talk about cricket as a family seems like sentimental cliche; on days like this, it's true.
The wave of sympathy for poor Sean Abbott has been good to see. I don't know what he will do, and it's too soon for him to decide. I keep thinking that this is where I came in, nearly forty years ago: the first incident in a cricket match which I remember was at the end of the Auckland Test of February 1975 when a bouncer from Peter Lever hit tail-end batsman Ewan Chatfield on the head. It was Bernie Thomas, the England physio, who saved his life when he realised Chatfield had swallowed his tongue and his heart briefly stopped. Chatfield was carried off on a stretcher, followed by the weeping Lever, but he was soon fine; that was his debut, and he went on to play another 42 Tests. There was a very good interview with Lever on Test Match Special yesterday. He said his first instinct was to give up cricket, and he probably would have done had Chatfield died. As it was, he refused to bowl bouncers for a while; he said it was Glenn Turner, the New Zealand batsman who also played for Worcestershire, who talked him round. Worcestershire were playing Lancashire, and Turner asked Lever "What's happened to your bouncer?" Lever said he just couldn't, after what had happened (Turner had also been in that Test), but Turner told him not to be silly and to bowl him a few bouncers. They can be lethal, but mostly they aren't.
It was that incident with Lever and Chatfield that really pulled me into cricket. Maybe it would have happened anyway; I dimly remember talk about England's problems with Lillee and Thomson earlier that winter. But it was the near-death that grabbed my attention - not the potential goriness of it, but the intensity of emotion it involved. When I first watched cricket that summer, Peter Lever was Lancashire's star bowler, and my favourite player: I can still recall his birthday and his best first-class bowling figures without thinking. Peter and Ewan were lucky. If you pray, pray for Phillip Hughes's family, and for Sean Abbott.
And Happy Lancashire Day.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.