High time Aussies cut the sledging in tribute to Hughes
It is three years since a bouncer killed the talented batsman, yet the Ashes vitriol suggests game has learned nothing
Three years on from Phillip Hughes’s death, time is failing in its function as a great healer. Michael Clarke, who produced so stirring an elegy at his friend’s funeral, acknowledged this week that however long the clock ticked on, he missed his “brother” with a sharpness that would not ease. “I just try to think of the times we celebrated, we partied, we sat on a coach, we went for coffee or had breakfast,” he said. “I miss him every day.”
So horrifying was the end for Hughes, struck by a bouncer that severed his vertebral artery and fatally cut off blood supply to the brain, that it became a trigger for national reflection in Australia. In the subsequent inquest, the coroner, while apportioning no personal blame, concluded there was “no doubt” Hughes had been targeted with bouncers, urging the country’s cricketers to consider whether sledging was worthy of “such a beautiful game”.
It was difficult to reconcile this rejection of machismo with the more lurid headlines adorning Australian tabloids yesterday. “Bodyline,” screamed the Brisbane Courier-mail, as Shane Warne urged the quicks to pepper England’s batsmen with chin music galore. The back page was equally inflammatory, describing the tourists as “too old, full of no-name players who won’t win a single Test”. How quickly the soaring statesmanship of Clarke has been forgotten. Australia’s paroxysm of grief over Hughes gave reason to predict a move towards a kinder, more considerate sport.
Martin Crowe, the former New Zealand captain, said before his death from cancer last year that what happened to Hughes should be a watershed for cricket. “This is not the uncouth WWF or heavyweight boxing,” he argued. “You should be respectful. Removing the lip, that negative intent, is what we can learn.”
The hyperbolic preamble to this Ashes series brings evidence that the old malice has returned. All the goading, for once, has been from the same side. First David Warner exhorted his team-mates to be in England’s faces, then Nathan Lyon, usually the most peaceable of souls, declared a wish to “end the careers” of his opponents.
Finding Lyon cast as the agent provocateur was rather like discovering that Bambi had morphed overnight into a charging