Phillip Hughes died 10 years ago this week when he was struck on the neck by a short ball in a Sheffield Shield game at the SCG. He was 25 years old.
That event has remained a seismic one for cricket over the ensuing decade, an unfathomable tragedy for all who knew him and for millions more who did not.
Phillip Hughes batting for Australia.Credit: Reuters
Hughes’ death changed cricket forever, but in his brief career he was already a game-changer. Combining an uncomplicated country upbringing with an effervescent personality and a homespun batting technique, he was destined for a long international career on his own terms at a time when the game was much more prescriptive in nature.
As it is, forever 63 not out for South Australia against NSW, Hughes’ legend has grown in the years since his passing. This masthead spoke with Pat Cummins, Glenn Maxwell and Steve Smith about how Hughes changed cricket, both in the manner of his life and his death.
‘There’s a little bit less chest-beating’
Ask Pat Cummins about Hughes and the first memories he recalls are the batter’s repeated chats about his beloved cows on the farm in his hometown, Macksville, and moments of regional naivety that stayed with him even after he’d long since moved to Sydney.
Pat Cummins, now Australian captain, came up through the ranks at NSW and Australia a few years behind Phillip Hughes.Credit: Getty
“There’s stories like leaving his data roaming on for a whole Ashes tour and didn’t know what data roaming was and then getting the bill at the end of the trip,” Cummins says. “A few of those country traits he was still living, even after being in the city for a few years. Loved his cricket, loved his cows, loved a good time. A man of simple pleasures.”
But turn Cummins towards Hughes the cricketer and he stretches for superlatives.
“He was an absolute freak batter,” Cummins exclaims. “I was there in Darwin for the Australia A game where he hit 200 [in 2014], and it was just a level above everyone else. When he was on, there was nowhere you could bowl to him.
“He hit to weird areas. He could create width from straight bowling and was always aggressive, which is scary as a bowler because you feel like if you’re a little bit off he’s going to attack you.
“A lot of players are judged by statistics, but if you ask most of the playing group, they know who are the top players and who are the standard players, especially if you go and ask around state cricket. He was always No.1 on the list.
“Him and Steve Smith were the upper echelon – if they play a full season in the Shield, you just know they’re going to hit a hundred every game, basically. He did it his own way.”
Cummins was 21 years old and still three summers away from returning to the Test team when Hughes was hit. His primary recollection of how that moment changed the game was for the psychology of fast bowlers: bouncers are still bowled, but with less vituperative menace than before.
“There’s a little bit less chest-beating around fast bowling and particularly trying to intimidate batters than there was before that incident,” he says. “That’s the biggest on-field one.
“Nowadays as soon as you hit someone, you’re much more worried about their wellness, as opposed to 10-plus years ago, where you probably didn’t mind if you hurt a batter a bit, knock them around a bit.
“There’s still the intimidation part of it, but it is much more linked to trying to take wickets, where at times it would just be intimidation for the sake of intimidation.”
‘He had an unbelievable range’
Hughes had a homespun batting technique.Credit: Getty Images
In the here and now, Glenn Maxwell’s is the cricketing name most synonymous with outlandish unorthodoxy. But his way was paved in many ways by Hughes.
“I remember playing a Shield game against him, first over of the second innings, and he hit Sidds (Peter Siddle) randomly, swiped one from three-quarter[s up the stump] stump over midwicket, and we were like ‘what is going on here’,” Maxwell recalls.
“But he didn’t miss the middle after that; he went bang, and it was a pretty rogue shot, but he didn’t miss the middle. An unbelievable eye. Then he’d cut one from top of off, then move across and work one behind square leg. He had an unbelievable range.
“The 200 he got up in Darwin for Australia A, I watched that and thought that was so sick. I watched those highlights on repeat. All the shots were so typical of Hughesy. Big, long extensions when he was going over mid-on, front foot splayed for a cut shot and throwing hands through it, I used to absolutely love watching him bat. A nightmare to bat behind in one day cricket, but geez, he was so good.”
Hughes fought more than a few battles with coaches and selectors about playing his way, and Maxwell believes those debates helped lead to a professional game that is now much more accommodating for natural flair.
As an unconventional batter himself, Glenn Maxwell admired Phil Hughes.Credit: Getty Images
“It’s much more open to the unique and not as technically driven,” he says. “If they’ve got good hand-eye coordination and good decision-making, that can sometimes be enough, where it used to be if you didn’t look good playing the cover drive, then you were never going to make it.
“I’m glad it’s changed. It’s changed for the better that we’re now rewarding players who are highly skilled and talented hitters of a cricket ball and can make good decisions. That’s all you really need. If you refine those couple of things you’re going to have good results. If it doesn’t look quite right, it doesn’t really matter, as long as you get the results.”
Maxwell remembers how, in the days and weeks after Hughes’ death, he went on an emotional rollercoaster with then housemate Aaron Finch. As batters, it was the first time either had known anything more than a vague fear of being hit.
“All players had so many questions about what happened and how it happened,” he says. “Then you questioned ‘am I safe, is that going to happen to me’. It’s only human to start to think about ‘what if that was me’.
“I’ve played just as long, I’ve faced bowlers just as quick. Then you start to think about times you have been hit in the head and ‘why was I the lucky one and he the unlucky one’. There were just a lot of unknowns. We got sat down by one of the doctors and he explained what happened.
“We’ve got things in place now with the stem guards (an additional protective piece added to cricket helmets) to stop that happening in the future, but it was a pretty horrible time. At the time, Finchy and me were living together as well, so we had sounding boards at that time to sort of understand it. But I just remember it being a really tough time and hard to watch and play cricket with any sort of ferocity after that.”
‘It’s been 10 years but it feels like yesterday’
Smith didn’t quite meet Hughes for the first time with a batting glove punch in the middle of a cricket ground, but it wasn’t far off.
Smith raises his bat to the sky after reaching a century against India at Adelaide following Phillip Hughes’ death in 2014.Credit: Getty
“The first time I came across him was an under-17s trial match down in Canberra, and we were opening together and both got runs,” he says. “I just enjoyed playing with him and from that moment our friendship grew. We enjoyed batting a lot, and coffee and whatever else. He was such a good player.
“Just before he passed he was probably as good a player as he had been. He discovered the leg side and that he could score on that side of the ground a lot more. He was known for his cut shot and cover drive, but found the leg side, so that was one of the saddest things – we didn’t see the best of him, particularly at international level. But the opportunities he got, he was still a very good player.
“We were good mates going through, and even when he went down to play in Adelaide we still got on really well. It’s been 10 years, but it feels like yesterday.”
Where Hughes left a mark on Smith was in how much he valued friendship and had that sentiment returned by so many around him: a departure, perhaps, from the single-minded focus of so many top-tier cricketers, especially batters.
“He was a nice human being who people wanted to be around, and we saw when he passed away just the outpouring, how sad it was,” Smith says softly. “Everyone who showed up from different walks of life. He was so loved among players, community, friends and family he was very tight with as well.”
Smith puzzles over the paradox of that 2014-15 summer. Amid so much grief and trauma, he went on to the first big home season of his Test career, carving out four centuries in as many Test matches against India. It was not until 2019, hit in a similar spot by Jofra Archer and suffering only a concussion, that Smith pondered it all again.
“There was a net session or two just after where you were more worried,” Smith says. “You face so many short balls and nothing’s ever happened and then it’s ‘geez, what if I get hit in the wrong spot here, I could be in trouble’.
“But it was kind of an initial thing. It wasn’t until Jofra actually hit me in 2019 in a similar spot to where Phil got hit that it hit me a bit more and I was like ‘geez, why am I ok here and he wasn’t’. That was difficult at that stage, but that thought went out of my head and I got back to playing again.”
Phillip Hughes and Steve Smith warming up together.
Looking back, Smith still thinks of that summer a decade ago as the best he ever batted, even outshining his momentous 2019 Ashes tour. And a part of him will always wonder at the link between losing Hughes and playing so well.
“I won’t say the cricket was irrelevant, but it just didn’t feel like the most important thing at that stage,” he says.
“Whether that helped me perform … it just didn’t feel like it was the most important thing at that time, cricket. Maybe that helped me. It was probably the best I’ve batted in my whole career – four hundreds in four games.
“Having that mentality of not caring as much in a way … you see some players that play their best that way. Mitch Marsh is a good example of someone carefree – he’s not afraid to get out, he’s just out there playing and he’s at his best when he’s playing that way. So maybe that summer was that for me.”
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