R.I.P. Phillip Hughes: A cricketing jewel lost forever

Phillip Hughes

With winters settling in Rajasthan and the cricketing summer in Australia just a week away, had anyone asked me to exchange my life on earth with the much touted blissful life in heaven, I would have rejected the proposal. Nothing allures but this planet where cricket resides. But today I do not concur with what I thought some days back.

One of the jewels of cricket has been stolen away by God and I am shattered. Wearing a mask of normality when I could no longer contain myself, I rushed into the bathroom to release pent up tears, going down memory lane to February 2009, the occasion when Phillip Hughes made his Test debut against South Africa in South Africa.

“It were for me

“To throw my scepter at the injurious gods,

“To tell them that this world did equal theirs

“Till they had stolen our jewel.”

These words of Shakespeare certain do justice to the sense of loss one is feeling at the moment.

I saw Phillip for the first time and begrudged him, like I do every time I see somebody with potential and as a possible replacement to injury prone Shane Watson. A short delivery by Dale Steyn claimed him and a duck adjacent to Phillip’s name satisfied me. When he came out to bat the second time around, I scanned him curiously. That short and petite frame, shy countenance and genuine expression rendered him a personality that was difficult to avoid.

When Simon Katich, Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke and Marcus North were sent back to the pavilion, Hughes stood firm and walked a tightrope against the virulent pace attack of the Proteas. Taking heart from the 75 scored in the second innings, the rookie amassed 115 and 160 in the second Test in Durban. Putting his artistry into action, cuts and drives and executing strokes with ease on the off side, he made history, and I fell in love with him.

After that, Phillip’s name in the squad did not make me insecure for Watson, as I saw him as the hero whom I shall follow after Watson. I never knew by this time, until I saw Hughes play, that I can develop a liking for a guy who was so regular looking with no burly shoulders, tall legs and a broad trunk.

A banana farmer’s son, simple at heart, conventional with bat and with no pretentious air about him, made me hopeful that in next two three years, after Watson, I will have a new hero whose game will make me smile and cheer. With a fabulous first-class record and rumours of him replacing the injured Clarke for the first Test at the Gabba, the time was ripe for him to re-enter the Australian squad and make a mark.

I was happy with the prospect of seeing Hughes and Watson play side by side, like they did back in 2010-11, during the Ashes series in Australia, but then came the news of the former’s ‘freak’ accident while playing a bouncer from Sean Abbott, in a Sheffield Shield match. I was horror-stricken and numb.

The unfavourable tidings that followed Hughes’s injury were gut-wrenching, and every hope faded drastically with reports that came from the doctors. And yesterday I opened my eyes to the news of Phil’s untimely demise; paralysed in thought and in action, sorrow and grief drenched my soul heavy.

The bucolic blue-eyed boy will now paint nothing on the cricket canvas, but his last score of 63 NOT OUT will always stay. No one is to blame, such is the nature of the game, it both delights and disappoints. The much-awaited Australian cricket summer now looks dismal and aggrieved. A 25-year-old has left the cricket arena unceremoniously and lovers of the game are in mourning.

The more I am reading stories of Hughes, shared by those close to him, the more poignant and painful the loss appears. He could have been the flame but now all that remains is cinders and smoke. Death is a stronger opponent and we the weaker. Peter Roebuck once said it right, “Cricket is a pursuit wherein the lessons of life are learned. They are not taught with the tenderness encountered elsewhere, for the game does not permit its children an easy raising or its veterans a comfortable passing”