Hughes family walks out

SYDNEY. — The family of Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes walked out of the inquest into his death yesterday, with his father calling the Sydney Cricket Ground an “unsafe workplace”.

Hughes, who played 26 Tests, was 25-years-old when he died from bleeding on the brain in November 2014 after being hit on the base of the skull by a ball during a domestic Sheffield Shield match in Sydney.

The five-day inquest, which wrapped up yesterday, has looked into whether he was targeted with short balls or “sledged” with unsettling comments from opponents, but has also exposed tensions between Hughes’ family and the cricket community.

In a statement to the coroner, Hughes’ father Greg wrote that he was concerned about the amount of short-pitch bowling to his son.

“By those balls not getting pulled up, of course this kept the bowlers continuing to target my son in an ungentlemanly way,” he wrote in the undated letter. He added that comments made by the opposing New South Wales bowlers “were more abusive and intimidating then sledging”, raising the alleged “I’m going to kill you” remark that bowler Doug Bollinger has denied making. “These slanderous comments . . . and the use of illegal deliveries in my eyes lead to a very unsafe workplace,” he said. — AFP.