RIP Phil Hughes

LAST weekend the family went around my brother's place to celebrate his 26th birthday. Friends, family and a vodka-infused boob cake (exactly as it sounds) helped him mark the occasion with the dignity and shenanigans it deserved.

I'm not sure if Phillip Joel Hughes was planning the same thing for a week later. Probably not - after a Shield game at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) he was tipped to replace skipper Michael Clarke in the Test team to play India starting December 4. It would have been his first Test in about 18 months, so I'm not sure his birthday plans involved motorboating said vodka-infused bob cake.

We'll never know.

While playing for South Australia against New South Wales Phillip Hughes went to play the pull shot off fast-medium bowler Sean Abbott. They had been team-mates in Australia's recent tour of the United Arab Emirates, where they had both made their Twenty20 International debuts in a match against Pakistan. Both were seemingly on the way up: Abbott made his T20 and One-Day International debuts on that tour, while Hughes was widely tipped to be the next great Australian Test opener.

Hughes had played the pull shot many times in his career, had faced short-pitched (aimed at the batsman's head) bowling from many of the world's greatest bowlers. In 2009 he'd made his Test debut against South Africa in South Africa, moving up from a duck (0) in his first innings to 75 in his second, to scores of 115 and 160 in just his second Test. Nobody had hit two centuries in the one Test at a younger age (20 years and 98 days) - and rarely can anyone have completed the feat against better bowlers. Dale Steyn, Makhaya Ntini, Jacques Kallis and Morne Morkel all had or would have over 200 wickets each, yet here was this tiny bloke smacking them around. How could they stop him?

In the 2009 Ashes England found a way. Bowling fast and straight they cramped Hughes for room, leading to him being dropped after the Second Test and him with the faux pas of announcing his dropping on Twitter before Cricket Australia had officially announced it. That was the first time he was dropped from the Test team; there'd be a few more down the track. One such time was when he edged New Zealand seamer Chris Martin to fielder Martin Guptill four consecutive times; as commentator Kerry O'Keefe said, if Hughes had nicked himself shaving Guptill would have been there with the band-aid!

So Hughes was no mug with the bat. At one point he was even a world record holder, taking part in a 163-run 10th wicket stand with debutant Ashton Agar. Naturally, a couple of Tests later Hughes was dropped.


THE ball-by-ball commentary on cricket.com.au's website reads:

48.3Abbott to Phil Hughes

No run, problem here, misses a pull shot and hit, urgent treatment needed

Comment

He'd been leaving the short balls, had a go at this one, misjudged it and was hit in the back of the head. He blacked out and fell badly on his face. Medics are assisting now.

Comment

Phillip Hughes is heading off here on a stretcher on a medicab. They're holding his head and it doesn't look at all good. All the players are now coming off.

Two days later Phillip Joel Hughes died in hospital as a result of that hit. When the ball hit him on the neck it ruptured an artery that feeds blood directly into the brain. The Vertebral Artery Dissection that resulted has only been recorded around 100 times in medical literature, and only once by a cricket ball. Phil Hughes was a freakishly talented batsman killed by a freakish accident.


DRIVING back home from my brother's I took the time to remember back to when I turned 26. I was living in London and had just finished my first season as a tour guide; in the intervening eight years I have been lucky enough to travel the world (often while getting paid for it), had grown immensely as a person and had met some of the most amazing people, many who I'm still proud to call my friends. For me 26 was where I became who I am today. I'm sure my brother will go through that and a fair bit more as he grows older.

Phil Hughes was just one week younger than my brother, but he didn't make it to 26. That he died playing the sport he loved - the sport so many of us love - makes it all the more poignant.

Rest in peace.

Come on Aussie, just come on, please?!?

IT'S beautiful really. You, YouTube, a glass of scotch and more batting highlights than you can poke a stick at.

Gilchrist, the bowler's Anti-Christ. Mark Waugh and Damien Martyn, all elegance and timing. Steve Waugh, all bloody-mindedness; Matthew Hayden, just bloody for bowlers. Beautiful times, were they not?

If you want something from this decade you've a hell of a task. There's Michael Clarke against South Africa, Michael Hussey against England, Michael Clarke against India, Michael Hussey against Sri Lanka. Therein lies the problem: of Australia's 37 Test centuries since January 1 2010, 20 came from a man called Michael. Of the current Ashes squad pugilist David Warner has three; Matthew Wade has two; with Ed Cowan, Brad Haddin, Phil Hughes and Shane Watson scoring one each. Compare this to the 90s and early 2000s when batsmen like Stuart Law, Martin Love and Brad Hodge struggled to get a meaningful run; where Darren Lehmann, Damien Martyn, Simon Katich and even Matthew Hayden hit century after century before they could get in green.

So what happened? The bowling seems to be coming along nicely; provided of course that Messrs Cummins, Pattinson, Bird and Starc keep developing and stay injury-free. But watching Australia bat is like getting blind drunk and playing Five-Finger Fillet - every now and then you'll pull it off, but you know deep down it's going to end in tears.

So what went wrong?

For starters, Cricket Australia did themselves no favours by tinkering with the format of the Second XI competition. Back in 2002/03 a group of dedicated amateurs covered Cricket ACT matches against the South Australia and Western Australian Second XI's for local radio. While there were plenty of young guns like Shaun Tait, Adam Voges, Beau Casson and Luke Ronchi in the opposition ranks, they were being led by some seriously experienced heads. Former Australian ODI representative Brad Young scored a century and took 14 wickets for South Australia; Stuart Karppinen, Nathan Adcock, Jeff Vaughan and Mark Harrity were all in their late twenties and looking to play themselves back into first-class cricket. In short, it was the perfect combination of youth and experience that made these matches the perfect nursery for talented young cricketers.

Fast-forward to 2009 and Cricket Australia decided to tinker. The Second XI competition became the Futures League, with only three over-23s allowed in each team. While this article from The Roar's Brett McKay at the time suggested good things for Australian cricket and Australian spinners, it didn't take long for the players to voice their concerns. In his book In The Firing Line, Ed Cowan (a late-bloomer himself) made this point:

All of a sudden accomplished players in the larger states ... were merely treading water if they found themselves out of favour or form, relegated to playing club cricket that they had dominated for six, seven or eight years already. In their place, talented but not yet ripe youngsters, not quite across the game as a whole, let alone their own, were given preferences for places. It has taken a few years but we are now reaping what we sowed as a cricket community.

Tasmanian captain George Bailey wasn't a fan either:

 "It's become really difficult to have guys who aren't in your best XI, consistently playing good, hard cricket against other teams, with that under-23 rule," Bailey said. "I've got no doubt that cricket and the way the bodies are, you play your best cricket after you're 23, and it's much the same as the Australian team. I think the best Australian players are better for having a really strong first-class system and we're much the same."

 Nowadays teams are allowed six over-23 players; again, the late-bloomers and 24-year-olds don't seem to get much of a look-in. Combine this with the large amount of experience lost with the retirements of Warne, McGrath, Langer, Hayden, Gilchrist et al, and it really wasn't a great time for anyone to be missing out on some tough cricket.

Discipline seems to be a problem as well. During Australia's fallow period in the mid-1980s many had the talent, yet few had the self-discipline that would make them truly great. When Bob Simpson became coach in 1986 he decided to run with a few players that he felt had the "ticker" necessary to consistently succeed at Test cricket, giving players like Steve Waugh and Ian Healy a long run over players like Greg Ritchie and Tim Zoehrer. Likewise, who wouldn't want to see a Chris Rogers, Sam Robson, Adam Voges or George Bailey get a run right now ahead of a David Warner or Shane Watson? Could it be that the aforementioned players are slightly hungrier by not playing Twenty20 cricket around the world?

So there are a couple of possible reasons for Australia's cricketing decline. Question is, how do we fix it so that Australian cricket highlights aren't archived in the "Classics" section of the internet?