AUSTRALIA MOURNS A STAR
Cricketer’s freak death rocks nation
Australia is in a state of shock, disbelief and mourning.
Every media outlet in the country cancelled its usual fare Thursday to announce the tragic news that national team cricketer Phillip Hughes had died after being struck in the head 48 hours earlier by a ball at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
With his mother and sister watching from the stands, Hughes, 25, stood woozily for a couple of seconds with his hands on his knees, before collapsing face-first on to the pitch, never to regain consciousness.
The Aussies are as good at cricket as Canadians are at hockey, and every bit as passionate about it. The stunned reaction of his countrymen to the way Hughes was cut down by a “bouncer” — a ball that rises up to head height — was akin to the anguish and distress that Canadians would feel if one of their Olympians were to die after taking a puck to the head.
Rugby in its various forms is hugely popular in Australia, but cricket remains the national game. It holds such a special place in the Australian psyche that it has often been said only half jokingly that there are two big jobs in the country: prime minister and captain of the national cricket team.
There are sharp differences, of course, between how the world perceives cricket and hockey. Many consider hockey to be an extremely violent game played by ruffians. Only a few hours before Hughes’s death was announced, I heard a radio announcer repeating Rodney Dangerfield’s old joke about having gone “to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out.”
Hockey’s notoriety is in sharp contrast to cricket’s reputation as a gentleman’s game partially defined by aristocratic traditions such as pausing for afternoon tea. In one potentially fatal respect, however, the two sports are identical. Potentially lethal projectiles that can rise, fall, curve or spin unpredictably are constantly launched at batsmen and goalies.
A cricket ball is made of cork and covered by leather. It weighs 160 grams, which is slightly less than a hockey puck. One is red, the other is black. Both are almost rock-hard and can travel at speeds up to 160 km/ h.
The goal of cricket bowlers and hockey players is to get the ball or puck past those whose bodies protect a wicket or goal. That was what Sean Abbott, who visited Hughes’s family for hours in hospital on Wednesday, was trying to do in a match between New South Wales and South Australia when he bowled the ball that killed Hughes.
“Our grief runs deep,” the head of Cricket Australia, James Sutherland, said Thursday of the “freak accident.” The ball that killed Hughes had found a small opening behind his ear, millimetres from the helmet and cage that he was wearing. The force of the blow fractured his skull, severed his vertebral artery and caused severe internal bleeding in his skull.
Hughes was kept in an induced coma from the moment he arrived at hospital. After performing surgery to relieve pressure on his brain, doctors found no solution to his dire predicament.
His family decided Thursday to turn off the life-support system that was keeping him alive.
Like so many Canadian hockey players, Hughes was from this country’s vast hinterlands. His father, whom he was said to be particularly close to, has a banana farm in northern New South Wales.
Because of his strong country roots and what one retired cricketer described as his “humble, understated, hard-working” attitude, there was much talk
Hockey’s notoriety is in sharp contrast to cricket’s reputation as a gentleman’s game.
Thursday about how quintessentially Australian he was.
It is not that uncommon for a batsman to get struck in the head by a ball. But fatalities in cricket are extremely rare. There have been one or two calls since Hughes was hit to ban or even criminalize bouncers. But like hockey, cricket is a sport that loves its traditions. Change comes slowly. How and where to bounce a ball is a cherished skill that is central to the battle between bowler and batsman.
Within an hour of Hughes’s death, other matches across the country were cancelled. Radio and television stations played solemn music. Broadcasts and Twitter were flooded by a seemingly endless stream of tributes from players, coaches and fans whose lives the young batsman had touched as he struggled over the past few years to hold his place in the national team.
A prodigy whose international career started with a bang at the age of 20 with two centuries in his second test match, Hughes was expected to have been named to the Australian team for a test Thursday against India. Whether that will be played is now in doubt.