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A day in the life? You are Phil Hughes

Phil Hughes: 1988-2014. (AAP Image/Chris Crerar)
Roar Pro
3rd November, 2014
20

Please, for the purposes of this article and any consequential discussion, momentarily ignore however surprising or unsettling such a revelation may indeed be for the real you.

Because for now, all that is important, is that you are Phil Hughes.

It’s November 2012 and the selectors have rediscovered your phone number. And why wouldn’t they have? After all, they were the ones who had asked you to go back and make runs at Shield level. They were the ones who wanted you to play with a straighter bat. To stop all that nonsensical ‘back-foot-to-the-legside’ stupidity that had absurdly gotten you mountains of runs and to where you are now.

They want you to play Sri Lanka.

The newspapers decorate you as the nation’s newest capeless batting hero, the white knight born to lead Australia out of the post-Ponting depression and into the Hughes era of English torment.

And it begins well. Sure, you’re slow to start your innings perhaps, but you want to show the world your new, robust technique anyway, the one that worked for thousands of batsmen before you. See, your front leg is opened up and everything!

You finish the series to a round of applause, even despite the lack of a century. But you manage to sneak a few of those in during the one day international series, which you feel will leave you in good touch for India.

Even the notoriously cantankerous Ian Chappell says he thinks you’re one of Australia’s better players of spin, a comment that originally seems like a compliment but sours in the coming weeks as if it were a neglected gift-bag of fruit.

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However things soon change. After swift introductions are made, it becomes abundantly clear that Indian cricket pitches do not like you. The more you change your approach, the more they do to show they don’t care. You get on the front foot, the ball leaps at your throat. You duck, the ball dies as if shot and strikes you in the side. The only seeming consistency is the enthusiasm to which the ball has when presented an opportunity to laugh at you.

With the amount of men standing around you, staring and anticipating your every move, you begin to wonder whether this is what it’s like to be an unaccompanied Scarlett Johansson in a bar.

Ashwin is everywhere too. He’s there standing at the other end. He’s there on the backs of your eyelids. Humiliating you as he bowls you around his legs again. You keep telling yourself to get right back or right forward, but in the end you can’t quite manage either.

Whitewashes are rarely pretty, but this one is the lovechild of Susan Boyle and Barnaby Joyce. By the English tour, a coach has been fired, another hired, a selector resigned, and a Sheffield Shield family band headed by Chris ‘Old Man River’ Rogers has emerged.

Consequentially, you’re demoted both literally and spiritually. No longer the white knight of the castle, now the son still living at home, whose parents are prompting to get on with it.

Reassigned to a middle-order role thanks to a confidence inducing assessment of your ability from the new coach, your form is strong in the tour matches without being incredible.

The first Test arrives and a redefined Australian top-order exhibits the stability of…the last one. Though not in your best touch, you scrap for your 81 runs and quietly thank Alastair Cook for his persistence in offering you singles, even despite how clear it became as your partnership with Agar progressed into “you’re joking!” levels, that the latter was the one seeing the ball better.

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You walk off the ground the unsung hero, the momentum shift practically carrying you to the pavilion.

Three innings later, featuring frequent shifts of batting position that begins to resemble an under 12s team line-up to give kids a go, you’re again thrown aside.

A better, but still lacking, ODI tour of India follows and you’re seemingly done.

The parents have had enough.

So you watch from the outer, as a who’s who of prodigal sons overwhelm your parents with a five-month karma train of success. You’re in and out of squads, but never really considered for teams.

You become very accustomed to plane travel, watching others bat and sometimes, others succeed. Forced to sit from the sidelines and watch as the team rides turbulent highs and lows.

You’re overlooked for anyone, anything. A piece of cheese might have a greater chance of being chosen ahead of you if it weren’t for the fact it would likely go off by a second or third day in the sun.

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But soon you’ll return to Adelaide Oval, to that class you shine much brighter within.

And two things remain. That you will continue to muster runs, and that you should be thankful you are not Phil Hughes.

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