by That day, that week, that fortnight of helplessness and despair comes to you 10 years later in a blur of images – the pitcher cradling Phillip Hughes’ head, the teammate removing his pads, the orderly assembly of the bats of cricket on the porches, the explanation detached. of the neurosurgeon, mourners fanning themselves in the high school gymnasium.
It was a basal subarachnoid hemorrhage – a fluke. We are now largely accustomed to such tragedies, but sometimes they penetrate your marrow. A child is hit by a car which crashes into a playground. A family is blown to pieces by a missile. A young girl is murdered and abandoned in a landfill. A cricketer is killed on the field.
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Those who mock sport – and it sometimes deserves to be ridiculed – say our response to these tragedies is excessive, provincial, almost embarrassing. But even if we have never met them, athletes can still move us, repel us, shock us, teach us. And when they die too young, we can mourn them.
Hughes’ death certainly moved audiences in a way we’ve never seen before. There was a restraint, a dignity, a decency that was at odds with the social media that instigated it. This is a reminder that sport is ultimately a shared experience and that not all of these actions are imagined by sponsors, administrators or broadcasters.
And it was a reminder of something else – something that cricket, with its quirks, village traditions and rudimentary democracy – does better than most sports. It’s about understanding that everyone, from the most incompetent suburbanite to the solar fame and talent of Virat Kohli, plays the same game, respects the same history, is subject to the same laws and faces the same dangers. Cricketers, whether at Christmas lunch or at Lord’s, stand guard and weigh their options. Cricketers raise their bats, curse their luck, and strike into the shadows the shot they should have played. And cricketers always return home.
The fondness of the memory and the depth of the loss are undoubtedly testament to the kind of cricketer he was. For so long in Australia, cricket was about paying your dues, lining up and taking your chance. Hughes’ career has been almost the opposite. He burst into Test cricket in a blaze of light. We had grown up watching the stocky openers scratch. But Hughes was unlike any of them. He was so cowardly, so unorthodox, so completely fearless against the South African bowling team. Wearing a black armband in honor of Victoria’s bushfire victims, he launched his first song with consecutive sixes.
We all have memories of him, but I vividly remember the first ball he faced against Pakistan in the Sydney Test a year later. Mohammad Sami arrived and Hughes tried to hit him into Lake Kippax. He faced 10 balls and failed to run, but I loved him all the more for it.
Anyone who has lost a loved one far too young is tortured by the same thoughts. What would they be like now? What would they look like? What kind of adults would they have become? They hit you in moments of joy and in the mundanity of everyday life. You welcome a newborn but there is an absence, a painful loss. You see a woman on the train who would be the same age, the same hair color. You do the math and stare a little longer than you should.
Among athletes, especially on days like today, these questions also bother us. How would Hughes have adapted and improved his game? Would it have been a calming, sensible voice when testing the sandpaper? How would he have handled Jasprit Bumrah this weekend? In his eulogy, Michael Clarke said he kept looking for him, waiting for him to appear, to wander around, to lighten the mood. Every now and then, although increasingly rarely, I see a cricketer who reminds me of Hughes. They are usually young, invariably from the country, usually before the rough edges have been ironed out of their game. Sometimes I listen to an AFL rookie from the country and I hear Hughes’ voice – that dry, bony accent and totally intact that we heard at his funeral.
At the funeral, there was a single bat, a Kookaburra, leaning against a coffin. The benches were filled with prime ministers, Indian superstars and local breeders. For his loved ones and for those who did not know him, the communion, the eulogies, the tributes, the bat congas around the world – all this was a comfort.
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Time heals, they tell you. And they are right to a certain extent. But grief, writes Joan Didion, “comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees, blind the eyes and erase the daily grind of life.” Sport helps. Sports are sometimes a way to connect, to step away, and to find meaning when real things are too hard to talk about, too hard to accept. I’ve seen this called “the great avoidance” before. In sports like cricket, there can be comfort in numbers, in dates, in averages. But while Hughes’ numbers provide some clarity, they offer no comfort. He was not 63 years old. It’s been 10 years. He would have been 36 this Saturday.
I once saw an interview with a footballer whose daughter had died of a brain tumor. “Did he feel cheated? » » asked the journalist. The footballer, the father, was flattened by this question. Of course, he finally said. But She he was the one who had been deceived.
Those who loved Phillip Hughes spoke of the things he could never do again: regain his Test place, realize his talent, become a parent, retire to breed Angus cattle. All of this was stolen from him. It was a life celebrated and a life that will never be forgotten. But it was still a stolen life. I repeat, he would have been 36 this Saturday. Nothing we do as fans and nothing we write as journalists can truly cope with the crushing desolation of this.
