Accidental Death? by Robin Bowles

Author:Robin Bowles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TRU000000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2018-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

‘Put out your bats’: a heartfelt gesture that swept the world.

63 NOT OUT

Cricket isn’t life or death. It’s much more important.

Cricket slogan

On 25 November 2014, a Sheffield Shield cricket match between New South Wales and South Australia was scheduled at the Sydney Cricket Ground. It was a perfect day for cricket, and the young man who strode to the pitch to open the batting for South Australia was the perfect man for the job. The position of opening bat is the pinnacle of achievement for a batsman, usually reached as the reward for a long haul through the batting ranks and anxious hours sweating on the team selection. But in this match, the opener to watch was Phillip Hughes, a 25-year-old larrikin who had graduated to opening batsman less than a week after his debut in first-class cricket.

South Australia won the toss and elected to bat, with Hughes and his partner, Mark Cosgrove, facing fast-medium bowler Sean Abbott and spinner Nathan Lyon. Cosgrove was out early, and Tom Cooper came in at number three. Hughes made his half-century before lunch. After the break, he returned to the crease to continue making runs, confidently hooking bouncers and sending drives to mid-off. He’d honed his batting skills over years of practice against his brother Jason, aiming for the chook pen, which was classed as mid-off and worth a four in backyard cricket.

Sean sent another bouncer towards Phillip. It was a short ball on middle stump, probably travelling at 120 kilometres an hour. As it bounced to shoulder height, Phillip swung to hook the ball and missed. He inexplicably leaned forward, put his hands on his knees, then fell face-down on the ground as if he’d been shot.

Emergency medics ran onto the ground. His mates gathered around him as he lay motionless. The crowd, unusually hushed, stood up on seats, trying to see what had happened to bring his innings to such an abrupt standstill. An ambulance arrived, stretchered the fallen batsman into the rear and drove, sirens wailing, to Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital.

The match was abandoned. Players from both sides slowly made their way to the dressing rooms, seeking privacy from the stunned fans. Sean Abbott, who’d bowled the ball that felled Hughes, had no idea what had happened. He felt ‘confused and upset’ as his team-mates gathered around him.

Two other Shield games were being played that day, in Brisbane and Melbourne, and both were abandoned at the end of the day. A spokesman from Cricket Australia said, ‘Given how players across the country are feeling right now, it’s just not the day to be playing cricket.’

For Phillip Hughes, the game of cricket was over. In his final game, he was permanently 63 not out.

How did this happen in the gentlemanly game of cricket, with its written and unwritten rules, its tradition of keeping calm and batting on? This was the game Phillip Hughes had spent his whole life practising for, refining his skills, fighting back from bad patches and finally achieving his dream to don the baggy green for Australia.

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