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The literary critic George Steiner wrote that prodigies exist in three fields only: music, maths and chess. He might have added cricket to that list.
The game has produced more than its fair share of tales of youthful talent. Legendary is the story of the young Donald Bradman hitting a golf ball with a stump at the back of his Bowral home (anyone who has attempted this will appreciate the extraordinary difficulty).
More recently, there is Ricky Ponting who, as a Launceston lad, scorned the use of a tennis ball and went on to debut for Tasmania just before his 18th birthday. To this list, one can add the name Phillip Hughes, which is now a tragic synonym for ‘life cut short in its prime’.
Not since tuberculosis claimed the life of Archie Jackson, aged 23 in 1933, has Australian cricket mourned the loss of a player with the same depth of feeling.
Jackson’s batting style was likened to that of Victor Trumper who himself died at the early age of 37 in 1915. Jackson was, like Hughes, a precocious talent who achieved great things at a young age. David Frith called him the ‘Keats of cricket’ – a reference not only to the poetic grace of his stroke play, but Keats’ own untimely death.
Hughes’ batting, unlike Jackson’s, was far from orthodox. At times awkward, at others breathtakingly inventive, it could make one wince but was more likely to make one marvel. My favourite memory of Hughes is of him facing Rangana Herath at Bellerive Oval in the first Test in December 2012. He was 59 not out. Finding he had somewhat misjudged the length of a ball, Hughes nevertheless contrived a slog sweep that sailed over the deep long-on boundary for six.
In his ABC commentary Kerry O’Keefe insisted, with a touch of awe, it was unorthodox but brilliant, with the emphasis on ‘brilliant’. It was the kind of shot that might bring to mind the words of Hughes’ namesake, the English poet Ted, whose hymn to cricket Sunstruck contains the following description.
“A six! And the ball slammed flat!/And the bat in flinders! The heart soaring!/And everyone jumping up and running/Fleeing after the ball.”
Watching Hughes in the field, one always felt a smile was never far from his face. Off-field, he seemed almost shy, his boyish features enhanced by his flickering eyes. He could be painfully earnest at the crease, biting his lip between deliveries as he reappraised the task in hand and prepared to face the bowler. He was fond of the sleeveless sweater and the ‘collar-up’ look, an indicator of his gritty credentials.
He was also refreshingly modest about his gifts, a virtue increasingly rare in an era in which big salaries are matched by big egos. It is fair to say that if the same awful fate had befallen any other Australian player, the sense of loss would be ever so slighter.
Cricket is the sport that comes closest to tragic drama. It is slow and subtle. From afar, cricket’s flanneled figures – their spotless whites cast against a carpet of verdant green, their gestures languid and flowing – seem ephemeral creatures. But this idyllic image conceals a streak of menace, for cricket can be brutal and beautiful in the same gesture.
Michael Holding’s spell to a balding, helmetless Brian Close in 1976 is perhaps the best proof of this. Holding – his Afro bobbing, his head bouncing as if listening to a Walkman – runs in rhythmically. The ball is released with a loose-limbed whir and whistles past Close’s head.
Like every other cricketer, Hughes knew the dangers, remote as they are. But there is a difference between knowing a thing and believing it.
The most harrowing fact of all is that Hughes probably never thought that the game he most loved in life would be the thing that killed him.
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