‘Put out your bats’: a heartfelt gesture that swept the world.

63 NOT OUT

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On 25 November 2014, a Sheffield Shield cricket match between New South Wales and South Australia was scheduled at the Sydney Cricket Ground. It was a perfect day for cricket, and the young man who strode to the pitch to open the batting for South Australia was the perfect man for the job. The position of opening bat is the pinnacle of achievement for a batsman, usually reached as the reward for a long haul through the batting ranks and anxious hours sweating on the team selection. But in this match, the opener to watch was Phillip Hughes, a 25-year-old larrikin who had graduated to opening batsman less than a week after his debut in first-class cricket.

South Australia won the toss and elected to bat, with Hughes and his partner, Mark Cosgrove, facing fast-medium bowler Sean Abbott and spinner Nathan Lyon. Cosgrove was out early, and Tom Cooper came in at number three. Hughes made his half-century before lunch. After the break, he returned to the crease to continue making runs, confidently hooking bouncers and sending drives to mid-off. He’d honed his batting skills over years of practice against his brother Jason, aiming for the chook pen, which was classed as mid-off and worth a four in backyard cricket.

Sean sent another bouncer towards Phillip. It was a short ball on middle stump, probably travelling at 120 kilometres an hour. As it bounced to shoulder height, Phillip swung to hook the ball and missed. He inexplicably leaned forward, put his hands on his knees, then fell face-down on the ground as if he’d been shot.

Emergency medics ran onto the ground. His mates gathered around him as he lay motionless. The crowd, unusually hushed, stood up on seats, trying to see what had happened to bring his innings to such an abrupt standstill. An ambulance arrived, stretchered the fallen batsman into the rear and drove, sirens wailing, to Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital.

The match was abandoned. Players from both sides slowly made their way to the dressing rooms, seeking privacy from the stunned fans. Sean Abbott, who’d bowled the ball that felled Hughes, had no idea what had happened. He felt ‘confused and upset’ as his team-mates gathered around him.

Two other Shield games were being played that day, in Brisbane and Melbourne, and both were abandoned at the end of the day. A spokesman from Cricket Australia said, ‘Given how players across the country are feeling right now, it’s just not the day to be playing cricket.’

For Phillip Hughes, the game of cricket was over. In his final game, he was permanently 63 not out.

How did this happen in the gentlemanly game of cricket, with its written and unwritten rules, its tradition of keeping calm and batting on? This was the game Phillip Hughes had spent his whole life practising for, refining his skills, fighting back from bad patches and finally achieving his dream to don the baggy green for Australia.

This is the Phillip Hughes story.

I’m not very knowledgeable about Test and Shield cricket, although I have more than a passing knowledge of the backyard variety, having been brought in to umpire a few times. Years ago, when my son Simon was nine, he’d often inveigle his younger-by-five-minutes twin, Adam, to face ball after ball as part of Simon’s Grand Plan to become the best bowler in Australia. Simon was convinced there was a baggy green with his name on it, just waiting for him to be good enough to claim it. As I watched him tirelessly throwing leg breaks, spins, googlies, bouncers, and yorkers, bowling around the wicket and over the wicket, using the laundry wall for one boundary, a chicken-wire fence for another and several apricot trees for the rest, I often wondered what it was about boys and cricket. There must have been boys in backyards all over the country doing this. Every now and then, Simon would roar ‘Out!’ as his delivery whacked into the old wooden apricot box that Adam was defending, sending fragments of long-dead apricots flying and lending a new meaning to the phrase ‘a sticky wicket’.

Simon’s dreams were brought to an end, not for lack of trying — I think the saying ‘Practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect’ was meant for him — but because he invested his delivery with such focus and energy that his developing spine began to display a serious curvature, which affected his walking, never mind his bowling. Off with the white flannels and into the white sheets, where he spent three months lying flat on his back with weights attached to both legs to stretch him straight again! He was advised to give cricket a miss thereafter. He later became a ‘petrol head’, where he could enjoy his sport of choice sitting down.

Not so for young Phillip Hughes, however.

The story of Phillip’s short but eventful life begins in Macksville, a small town on the Nambucca River in New South Wales, where the Pacific Highway does a sharp right towards Nambucca Heads. Phillip grew up in East Street, Macksville, surrounded by dozens of friends and several generations of family members. His doting grandparents lived just down the road in Taylors Arms, the site of the original ‘Pub with no Beer’. The pub might have become famous for running out of beer, but the welcome and the food never ran out in the home of Phillip’s Italian-born grandmother, Angela. Phillip was a big baby, weighing more than nine pounds (about four kilos) at birth, and his grandfather, Vince, tagged him ‘buffono’ or big. Thereafter, Phillip was nicknamed Boofa at home.

As well as being close to his brother Jason and little sister Megan, Phillip often played with his older cousin Sharnie, whose father, Geato Ramunno, was his mother’s brother. Sharnie was one of the few girls allowed to join in backyard sports with the close-knit pack of East Street boys.

The cousins and friends were always together after school. In the early days, Rugby was their game and Sharnie was the best of them, but by the time Phillip was about 12 he’d decided that there was a baggy green in his future. The lad was blessed with a charm that could sway other family members. Even his older brother Jason would usually give in to Phillip’s constant demands to bat first in the backyard games. If Jason’s resistance held when he won the toss fair and square, Phillip would enlist the aid of his mother, Virginia, to overrule the result. He was so lovable that people couldn’t stay cranky with him for long.

The Hughes backyard in East Street provided the training ground, not only for his left-handed hooks toward the chook pen, but also to perfect his famous cover drive. But in the Ramunno backyard he developed the cut shot that became his trademark.

In his official biography, published by Knox & Lalor, Sharnie recalled those games. ‘He would stand there the whole time. Cut shot, cut shot, cut shot, cut shot … until he got a hundred. And we were like, seriously, we can’t get this bugger out. We were glad when it was too dark to play sometimes as that was the only way to stop him.’

The rules were different at the Hughes house, where there was a score for every structure in the yard. Hitting a roaming chook was worth 25 runs, and at least one slow-footed bird paid with her life. At home, the cut was only worth two runs, so he worked hard at perfecting his drives towards the fence at mid-off, which would earn him four. Because there was outdoor lighting in the Hughes backyard, games often kept going until all the players had been summoned home for dinner.

When not physically practising, he’d come home from school and watch TV footage, time and again, of Justin Langer and Brian Lara, who were both experts at the cut shot. Watching them, he learned the secrets of staying calm and relaxed, focusing on the ball, nothing else, keeping his stance pretty square and then using the bat to hit the ball where it came in. He practised playing close to the body and hitting the ball to third man, or getting the bat over the top of balls that came wider out, giving the opportunity for a classic shot.

In high school, Phillip played junior cricket for the Macksville RSL Cricket Club, where he excelled so quickly that he was playing A-Grade at the age of 12, scoring his first century in representative cricket. When he was 15, he was selected for the NSW schoolboys’ team, which toured India. At the age of 17, he moved from Macksville to Sydney, where he attended Homebush Boys’ High and played for the Western Suburbs District Cricket Club in grade cricket, scoring 141 in his first match. Over the 2006–07 season, he scored a solid 752 runs at an average of 35.81, with a highest score of 142. In 2008, he represented Australia at the ICC Under-19 World Cup, and on the strength of his outstanding results, NSW Cricket offered him a rookie contract for the 2007–08 season. He joined the team at the age of 18 years and 355 days.

On 20 November 2007, Phillip stepped out on the SCG representing NSW for the first time. It was said that he was disappointed that he only made 51 runs, but NSW won the match by an innings, and Phillip was hooked on Sheffield Shield cricket. In March 2008, 19-year-old Phillip became the youngest player to reach a century in a Sheffield Shield final.

Phillip was building a stellar career. He did a spell of English county cricket for Middlesex, but he always had his eye on the big league. On his return, he told AAP reporters, ‘The big thing that came out of it was that I played at three Test grounds I’m going to be playing on and got to experience them before this big series coming up. Lord’s was my home ground there for Middlesex.’ Hughes’s spectacular rise invited comparisons with Sir Donald Bradman. When Phillip spoke to the AAP reporters, he’d scored an unparalleled 574 runs in just five first-class innings. Bradman, at the age of 21, had scored 556 runs in as many innings in 1930.

‘The rise to the top level has been very fast for me,’ Hughes was reported as saying. ‘I’m 20 years of age and it’s all happened like a bang.’

And that was the trajectory he was on. Over the next few years, he transferred from NSW to South Australia, played in Tests and international one-day matches, and had another season in England, this time with Worcestershire. But there were weak spots interrupting his run of successes. In 2010–11, he was dropped from the Australian Test team because of his inconsistent batting, but he was reinstated after Ricky Ponting retired and made a dramatic comeback, scoring back-to-back centuries as number 3 batsman against Sri Lanka in Hobart. He had another rough patch during the 2013 Test series in India, but the selectors were still slating him for inclusion in Australia’s 2015 World Cup team. So all eyes were on his form in the Shield match on 25 November 2015, when he and Tom Cooper strode out to bat, with Hughes at number one, filling in for Michael Clarke, the injured captain.

When Phillip went down, Sean Abbott was the first to reach him, followed quickly by all the other players. Someone called for medical assistance, as Hughes appeared to be unconscious. No one was quite sure what was wrong. He was wearing a helmet and was used to dealing with bouncers, so what the hell had happened? The team doctor, John Orchard, tried to resuscitate Phillip, helped by Dr Tim Stanley, an intensive-care specialist who ran from the stands. They intubated Phillip and gave life support, doing what they could for what seemed like an endless 30 minutes while they waited grimly for the ambulance.

Phillip’s mother Virginia and sister Megan were in the stands, there to cheer him on as opening batsman. Horrified and frozen to immobility they watched as the field of cricketers closed in around him. Someone erected a sheet as a privacy barrier around him while he was being treated. An ambulance arrived with paramedics, then a medevac chopper flew in and landed on the ground. Whatever had happened, it was serious.

Over the next two days, it seemed the whole nation was waiting for news. The question asked in every encounter was ‘Have you heard anything about Phillip Hughes?’ People who barely follow cricket, like me, are mothers of sons like Phillip. Men who don’t play cricket are armchair umpires, and Phillip was a favourite. Women missed his larrikin good looks, and boys playing backyard cricket missed their hero. Everyone in Australia seemed to be waiting, hoping he’d come out of his coma with a cheeky grin and a twinkle in his eye.

But it was not to be. The doctors advised that he’d suffered a catastrophic brain injury, so his family made the hard decision to farewell their boy and let him go. The Australian team doctor, Peter Bruckner, delivered the bad news to the waiting nation.

He said, ‘It is my sad duty to inform you that a short time ago Phillip Hughes passed away. He never regained consciousness following his injury on Tuesday. He was not in pain before he passed and was surrounded by his family and close friends. As a cricket community, we mourn his loss and extend our deepest sympathies to Phillip’s family and friends at this incredibly sad time.’

He explained that the blow from the cricket ball had compressed a large artery in Phillip’s neck, splitting it and leading to a ‘massive bleed’ into the brain. Bruckner described it as a ‘freakish’ injury. He added, ‘Vertebral artery dissection is incredibly rare. If you look in the literature, there have been only 100 cases reported. There has been only one previous example caused by a cricket ball.’

Australian captain Michael Clarke made a superhuman effort to say a few words to the media on behalf of Phillip’s family and thank everyone for all they’d done for their son.

The reactions were heartfelt, national and international. In India and Britain, Phillip’s death was big news. Leading sports commentator Gerard Whateley summed up for Australia, saying, ‘Phillip’s death is a numbing shock, which is more akin to when terrorist attacks have occurred around the world.’

Former Australian batsman Michael Slater told the BBC the death ‘has left a country weeping and has changed cricket forever. The whole of Australia is mourning because he was a fighter. He got dropped by Australia but came back out and scored lots of runs. Australians can relate to that. His death has affected a nation.’ Flags were lowered to half-mast at the Sydney Cricket Ground and its sister ground in Melbourne.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott described Phillip Hughes as ‘a young man living out his dreams’. And a simple tribute came from the grass roots of the country — from the fans, the backyard cricketers, the boys with dreams of baggy green. It began on Twitter when a former cricketer, Paul Taylor from northern Sydney, posted a photo of his cricket bat and cap leaning on the wall outside his door under the hash tag ‘#putoutyourbats’. The idea travelled like wildfire around the country, extended on Facebook and other social media. It was picked up by the mainstream media, and thousands of cricket bats appeared overnight, leaning by front gates, against school fences, beside back doors and high-rise apartment doors. All over the country, the bats went out as a tribute to the boy from Macksville who had lived his dream.

A few days later, Australian captain Michael Clarke fronted the media for the second time since Hughes’s tragic death, this time to speak on behalf of the players and staff and deliver a personal message.

Clarke had arrived at the SCG before the media conference and headed straight out to the centre wicket to pay his respects and honour his mate. During the media conference, it became clear that Clarke wasn’t even thinking about when cricket might resume. Judging by his body language on that day, many observers thought it could be some time until players would be even remotely ready.

Clarke had rehearsed his speech in a whisper, and once again did the Hughes family and his team-mates proud.

‘Words cannot express what we all feel as a team right now,’ he read. ‘To Greg, Virginia, Jason and Megan, we share in the deep pain you’re feeling.’

Clarke remembered how Hughesy used to put things into perspective, saying ‘Where else would you rather be, boys, but playing cricket for your country?’ Clarke went on, ‘The world lost one of its great blokes this week, and we are all poorer for it. Our promise to Hughesy’s family is that we will do everything we can to honour his memory.’

At Clarke’s request, Cricket Australia had agreed to retire Hughes’s Australian one-day international shirt number, 64. Its absence would be a constant reminder. ‘His legacy of trying to improve each and every day will drive us for the rest of our lives,’ Clarke said. ‘We’d like to thank everyone both here and overseas for the touching tributes to Hughesy in recent days. Our dressing room will never be the same. We loved him and always will. Rest in peace, Brussy.’

Cricket Australia boss James Sutherland was caught short by the devastating loss. Plans for cricket matches all over the country were up in the air. He told a news conference in Sydney the day after Phillip’s death that a decision hadn’t been made on whether the first Test against India, which was scheduled for the following week, would go ahead.

‘Cricket will go on when we’re ready, but we’ve not broached that subject with the players yet,’ Sutherland said. ‘We will in time, but they’ve got other things on their mind. The word “tragedy” gets used too often in sport, but this freak accident is a real-life tragedy.’

After all the tributes, the mourning, the funeral, the memorial service and the black armbands worn as the cricket team walked out to play their first game at the same crease where their mate had fallen, there was the inquest. And it appeared that some people weren’t altogether sure that Phillip’s death was an accident after all.

On 10 October 2016, an inquest began into the death of Phillip Hughes. Under section 82 of the NSW Coroner’s Act, a Coroner may make recommendations about changes in practice considered necessary or desirable in relation to any matter connected with the death, including in relation to public health and safety.

Phillip’s grieving family had expressed concerns that his fatal injury might have occurred because the umpires that day hadn’t enforced the rules of cricket designed to protect players from undue risk. At the inquest, the Hughes family was represented by Greg Melick SC, who told the inquest the family had concerns about the number of short balls bowled to Hughes that afternoon, and also about ‘sledging’ — that is, attempting to gain an advantage by insults and verbal harassment — in the lead-up to the blow. He said the family believed Hughes had been targeted in an ‘ungentlemanly way’.

There had also been concerns about the speed and appropriateness of the medical assistance rendered to Phillip immediately after his collapse. Those seeking the inquest wanted the Coroner to rule that if a player is seriously injured in future games, the best available medical assistance should be provided as soon as possible.

Counsel assisting the Coroner, Kristina Stern SC, opened by emphasising Hughes’s strong, supportive relations with his family. Greg, Phillip’s father, had raced down to Sydney as soon as he heard about his son’s injury and had now tendered a statement to the inquest emphasising Phillip’s ‘uncomplaining dedication’, resilience and moral strength. Phillip’s sister Megan, who had been at the SCG on that fateful day, remembered her brother as an ‘amazing individual’ who had been admired by many. When he was batting, she said, Phillip was always ‘on fire’, and on that particular day he was especially excited to play.

Stern then informed the court that she wanted to play a video recording of the events leading to Phillip’s collapse. At this, Greg and Megan both left the court, unable to bear the thought of witnessing those terrible moments again, but Phillip’s brother Jason and mother Virginia stayed on, grimly observing the tape of events.

Having shown the tape on the court’s twin screens, Stern went on to outline the key aspects of the game played on that fateful day. She said there’d been nothing untoward in the play. When Hughes was struck, he was batting with Tom Cooper, another solid batsman, at the other end. There had been no incidents and nothing out of the ordinary during the morning game — just good, solid cricket, according to all of those who saw it.

NSW had used five bowlers during the morning’s play — three fast bowlers, a medium pacer, and a spinner, all of whom did their best to get Phillip out. The longer he stayed in, the more chance he’d rack up a big score and help his team win the game, especially if he could conserve his running energy by hitting boundaries with his famous cut shot.

Dave Warner, who was playing for NSW that day, was Phillip’s close friend and team colleague. They’d played for Australia together and also on opposing sides. Warner said later that Hughes was playing comfortably and playing well. ‘He looked like he was playing easily — in control of what he was doing.’ He gave evidence that the NSW team considered Hughes and Cooper to be the key batsmen to get out. He said the NSW plan was to restrict Hughes’s rate of scoring by bowling short balls on middle and leg stump.

Without getting technical, as I’m too old to learn the rules of cricket, the information provided to the inquest focused on the plan to force Phillip to face short balls or bouncers, which hit the pitch in front of the batsman and bounce up on an angle. This style of bowling includes short-pitched balls that bounce over shoulder height, but can also include balls that bounce lower and force the batsman to duck under them. Different rules apply to each type of bouncer.

The style of each individual bowler dictates whether the ball bounces to the right, left, or straight at the batsman, causing him to duck. Very gentlemanly! Hughes was good at estimating the trajectory of these bouncers and usually hit them, but Dave Warner said they’d decided to have the bowlers aim at Phillip’s leg stump to force him to play off the back foot.

The NSW captain, Brad Haddin, denied that he’d done this. ‘One of the bowlers was a spin bowler,’ Haddin said. ‘If I wanted them playing off the back foot, I would have used different bowlers.’

At the inquest, several of the NSW players denied that there had been any sledging against Hughes. There had been a rumour that Doug Bollinger, one of the NSW bowlers, had muttered to the batsmen on the pitch, ‘I’m going to kill you, I’m going to kill youse.’ Haddin, Bollinger, and Cooper all denied that Bollinger had said any such thing. Bollinger said in evidence at the inquest, ‘I know in my heart I didn’t say that. I don’t remember saying anything like that to anyone. I know I didn’t sledge Phil.’

Tom Cooper, who was batting at the opposite end, also denied that there had been any sledging. His statement to the inquest said, in part, ‘Sledging is common practice in cricket, but I do not recall anyone sledging Phil on the day of the incident … I don’t remember him saying anything to me on the day about being sledged. In fact, my recollection is that the game was reasonably quiet in terms of sledging.’

However, several players claimed to have heard that sledge, and the Coroner observed from the videotapes that some sort of verbal exchange had occurred on the pitch that day. Jason, Phillip’s brother, was told about it from several quarters in the days following Phillip’s death.

The NSW team also denied that they’d targeted Hughes with bouncers, although a later analysis of the bowling showed that the number of short balls bowled to Hughes increased in the period after lunch. He faced 10 bouncers in the 29 overs before lunch and the same number in the 19 overs after lunch.

The Coroner concluded, ‘There is no doubt Phillip was targeted with this type of bowling. Of the 23 “bouncers” bowled on that day, 20 were bowled to him. Initially, that seemed to have little effect. In the 10 overs after lunch, Mr Hughes hit 24 runs, but in the ensuing nine overs he scored only seven.’

Cooper also recalled there was more short-pitched bowling after lunch to limit runs, and Phillip took the brunt of this because ‘he was the one that was making it look easy’. However, he was convinced that Phillip didn’t have any concerns about bouncers; on the contrary, he seemed very confident.

Brad Haddin also told the court that he’d instigated changes to the field placements after lunch, fearing Phillip would rack up a big score. ‘I was moving the field. I didn’t have any discussions with the bowlers about what I wanted them to do. From a captain’s point of view, I just wanted to cut the boundaries down.’ By setting the field wider, he hoped to create indecision in Phillip about where he could safely hit the ball and tempt him to hit riskier shots. He said that during lunch they’d discussed a plan for the afternoon, which was ‘to try and get Phil to nick the ball by moving his feet’.

Dave Warner said that in his long history of playing cricket with Phillip, ‘Phillip was never anxious or unsettled by short deliveries’. He would either tackle the ball to score runs, or failing that, he’d get out of the way.

Umpire Ash Barrow said in evidence to the inquest that at Sheffield Shield level, a top-order batsman would almost always have the skill to play shorter balls safely. He didn’t see the bowling on this day as presenting an increased risk to Phillip, taking Phillip’s skill level into account.

Phillip’s family, however, remained unconvinced that his death had been an accident. They continued to believe that he had been deliberately targeted by an excessive number of bouncers, which was outside the rules of cricket. They also argued that he had been placed in danger, as evidenced by Bollinger’s alleged comments about sledging.

State Coroner Barnes describes the final balls faced by Phillip Hughes in the accurate, dispassionate way coroners do:

Phillip Hughes was on strike. The first ball was slightly short and was easily defended with no run being scored. The second ball was short and on about middle stump. It bounced to about shoulder height. Mr Hughes moved across in front of his stumps and pulled it comfortably to fine leg for two runs. The third ball was shorter still and bounced higher. It too pitched on about middle stump. Phillip again attempted a leg-side stroke but seemed to get through the hook shot before the ball was with him — either he mistimed the strike or the ball came on more slowly than expected.

After he missed the ball, Mr Hughes carried through with the stroke so that his bat was horizontal and across his body and he was facing down the pitch. The ball continued on its trajectory and struck Phillip on the left hand side of his neck near the base of his skull.

Immediately following the blow he stepped to the side of the pitch and bent over, head down, and then placed both hands on his knees. Other players approached him, and after only a matter of a couple of seconds he fell to the ground, making no attempt to break his fall, apparently unconscious.

Whether or not the rules of cricket, the gentleman’s agreements fostered and upheld over the years of cricket tradition in Australia had been upheld or broken, one of cricket’s shining lights was flickering towards extinction, felled by a solid red missile travelling at more than 110 kilometres an hour.

The Coroner’s second avenue of inquiry was to determine whether Phillip’s life might have been preserved by faster and better emergency response.

Sports teams usually have their own doctors, but that day Dr John Orchard, an experienced sports physician usually responsible for the NSW team, was looking after both teams. He was in a medical room behind the Members’ Pavilion when the incident occurred. Sitting in the medical room under the pavilion, he was watching the live TV feed and monitoring play when he saw Phillip fall and not get up. He saw the other cricketers gathering around. He knew straight away this wasn’t good.

He ran upstairs through the Members’ Pavilion, but left his heavy medical bag behind, thinking that it would hamper his movement through the crowd.

The physio for South Australia, Jon Porter, was in the visiting team’s viewing room when he saw it happen. He grabbed a small medical bag and ran.

Both practitioners arrived on the scene together about 40 seconds after Phillip had collapsed. They found Phillip deeply unconscious. He had a strong, fast pulse of about 150, but his breathing gave great cause for alarm, as he was only taking about three breaths a minute, bordering on respiratory arrest. This combination could indicate head injury, shock, coma, all of the above, or none of the above.

An umpire used his two-way radio to call the match referee, who in turn rang James West, the NSW Cricket Event Coordinator, to ask him to get the doctor onto the field. West was in the Members’ Pavilion. Without looking to see who was already out there, he dashed to the doctor’s room, but Dr Orchard wasn’t there. West then realised that Dr Orchard was already on the field. Next, he found Murray Ryan, the NSW team physio, in the process of organising a medicab, a sort of motorised stretcher on wheels.

Ryan told West they needed a stretcher because Phillip was ‘not in a good way’. There was no stretcher in the medical room, so they ran about 500 metres to the NSW Cricket physio room, grabbed a stretcher and ran back to the field. It was now about four minutes after the incident by the clock on the CCTV. Phillip had been loaded onto the medicab using a spinal board.

At the request of Dr Orchard, the medicab moved Phillip to the side of the ground beside the Members’ Pavilion to be nearer to resuscitation equipment. The doctor observed that Phillip had stopped breathing and was turning blue. He was in respiratory arrest. Dr Orchard commenced expired air respiration and Phillip’s colour returned.

Dr Tim Stanley, a specialist emergency and intensive-care doctor, was at the game as a spectator when he saw the ball strike Phillip. Realising that Phillip needed urgent assistance, he made his way towards the group huddled protectively around the medicab and asked if he could help.

His offer was warmly welcomed and he took over monitoring Phillip’s pulse and maintaining his airway. He could see by the rise and fall in Phillip’s chest that the expired air resuscitation being performed by Dr Orchard was working.

Murray Ryan was asked to bring an oxygen tank and a defibrillator from the medical room. He couldn’t find any of this equipment in the bag in the medical room, so he again ran to the NSW Cricket physiotherapy room and grabbed two medical bags, an oxygen bottle, and a defibrillator.

He rushed this equipment to Dr Orchard. The doctors were then able to provide effective bag and mask ventilation with oxygen. Phillip’s pupils were now dilated and not responding to light, so Tim Stanley increased his oxygen in the hope of lowering the pressure inside Phillip’s skull. He suspected the intracranial pressure was building up, but he wasn’t certain why. At that time, most people thought Phillip had been hit on the head, even though he was wearing a helmet and didn’t have an obvious injury.

While the doctors by the Members’ Stand were battling to keep Phillip alive, they were expecting highly trained paramedics to arrive any minute with state-of-the-art equipment. Unfortunately, although Phillip had been felled in front of thousands of witnesses, the first call to Triple-0 was made quite a long time afterwards by Scott Henderson, an event coordinator at the Sydney Cricket and Sports Ground Trust, who was in his office when he was told that a player had been struck.

Henderson began walking to the ground a couple of hundred metres away. As he walked, James West rang and said, ‘We need an ambulance urgently.’ But when Henderson made the call, he didn’t know who was injured or how it had happened and therefore couldn’t provide much information. Phillip had been struck at 2.23, but Henderson’s call wasn’t logged until 2.29:55 — more than six minutes later.

Henderson told the operator to come to Gate 1 of the SCG. He said a cricketer, who he guessed was in his mid-twenties, had been struck in the head by a ball. He couldn’t say if the injured man was breathing, whether there was any serious bleeding, or whether he was conscious. In other words, he couldn’t convey the urgency of the situation. The operator, trying to prioritise the dozens of calls she was getting each minute, told Henderson to call back ‘if he gets worse in any way ... or if you get any further information’.

Henderson later told the Coroner he thought he was still connected to emergency when he saw Phillip and the group around him. He later said in his statement that as he got nearer, he asked the medical team if they needed him to pass on any information to the ambulance, although that isn’t recorded on the transcript of the call. They just said to try to get there ASAP.

Now, this was a problem. Ambulance operators have to be a bit like triage nurses these days. They get so many calls that they’re constantly required to make judgements about the severity of each situation. There are seven levels of urgency with correspondingly different response times. Because Henderson was unable to advise the operator about Phillip’s vital signs (which were becoming less vital by the minute), the call he made was allocated a 1C response, the third highest of the seven levels, requiring a response within 12.9 minutes.

If the emergency services had received more information, the call would have been bumped up the queue to a 1A and an expected response time of 10 minutes. 1A is also the only category where more than one ambulance can be dispatched as an initial response. At any rate, intensive-care paramedic Jacquelyn Jacobs, who was driving an ambulance alone that day, was assigned to the SCG job when she had just left an incident at Croydon Park, 14 kilometres away, or 25 minutes in Sydney traffic, without a siren. She did well to arrive at the SCG at 3:02 p.m., approximately 13 minutes after Phillip was hit. By this time, another unit had already arrived.

The Director of the Control Division of NSW Ambulance later told the Coroner that at the time of the first emergency call, there was no ambulance in the Sydney East dispatch area to respond, which was why Jocelyn Jacobs from Sydney South was given the job.

Reassured that the ambulance was coming, Scott Henderson opened and secured gates 1 and 9 and told staff to be on the lookout.

Donna Anderson, the team operations manager at Cricket NSW, had seen Phillip fall. At 2.36:05 p.m., she made another emergency call, then went to find Phillip’s mother and sister, who were standing about 50 metres from the action around Phillip, not knowing what to do. She moved them to a quieter spot. Someone yelled at her to check where the ambulance was, so she ran Triple-0 again. At last this call was allocated a category 1A, but then both Donna and the ambulance driver were confused about whether to enter through Gate 1 or Gate 9.

The paramedic, Mr Bradbury, said that when they drove along Driver Avenue, an official flagged them down and directed them to go back.

Eventually, at 2:44 p.m., 21 minutes after the ball hit Phillip, Mr Bradbury’s ambulance drove through gate 9, down the tunnel onto the field, and across the field to Phillip. The paramedics took over. They used their defibrillator to zap him and got a mask airway onto him, which got some air into his lungs.

Around 2:40 p.m., the Sydney Helicopter Emergency Medical Service received a call from the Rapid Launch Trauma Coordinator. The crew comprised a duty pilot, a duty air crewman, an intensive-care paramedic, Aaron Davidson, and a doctor, Michael Culshaw. Based at Bankstown Airport, they were sent to the SCG to pick up a patient who’d been hit in the head with a cricket ball. They arrived at about 3 p.m. Henderson had been told the helicopter was coming and had arranged a landing site.

Dr Culshaw immediately examined Phillip and found he had a GCS (Glasgow Coma Scale) reading of 3, when the normal score is 15. Phillip’s pupils were fixed and dilated, and he wasn’t moving. None of these were good signs. Dr Culshaw thought that Phillip must have had a significant intracranial haemorrhage, but he couldn’t see any injuries. He needed to get to hospital ASAP.

At 3.04 p.m., Phillip Hughes was loaded into the ambulance, which departed the scene about 3.08 p.m., left the SCG at 3:17 p.m. and arrived at St Vincent’s Hospital ambulance bay at approximately 3:21 p.m., approximately 1 hour after the incident. This includes the delay in calling an ambulance and the unavoidable travel time.

Phillip was transferred straight away to the Trauma Team. Everything possible was done to relieve the pressure from the internal bleeding, including ventricle drains, two craniectomies, CT scans, angiograms, and placing him in an induced coma, but the blood basically stopped moving through his brain because it was so squashed by blood around his brain. His devastated family agreed to the cessation of life support at 3.15 p.m. on 27 November 2014.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Not by far.

The necessary autopsy was conducted by Professor Johan Duflou of the University of Sydney. In the process, he undertook a review of the relevant medical literature, which led him to conclude: ‘Death due to subarachnoid haemorrhage brought on by vertebral artery laceration is a not uncommon finding in coronial autopsy practice.’ He observed that the injury most commonly occurs as a result of interpersonal violence, such as one-punch injuries, but he also observed that there were ‘isolated reports of these injuries being sustained as a result of a hard ball or similar object striking the head or neck during sport’. He said that dissection of the vertebral artery isn’t unknown in various sports; it rarely leads to intracranial haemorrhage, but the complication is not unheard of.

Professor Brian Owler, a consultant neurosurgeon, was briefed by the Coroner to undertake an independent review of the medical care provided to Phillip Hughes.

He agreed with Professor Duflou’s description of the fatal injury. He described it as having ‘a very poor prognosis’. In Phillip’s case, he said, ‘death was inevitable’. Dr Owler explained that blood ceased reaching the brain stem almost immediately after the blow, and ‘there was no intervention, no matter how early, that could have been performed to avoid Phillip Hughes’s death.’

Basically both experts were of the opinion that everything that could have been done was done. The injury was just too severe and he was never going to make it.

When parents lose a child, they feel angry and cheated. It’s not the proper order of things. They lose more than the child, because they lose everything that they expected to enjoy — in Phillip’s case, a wonderful cricketing career; perhaps grandchildren; his happy presence around them; the comfort in their old age of having brought up a son they loved and could be proud of.

Phillip’s family was convinced Phillip’s death was an ‘accident’ that need not have happened, and the issue they kept returning to was the speed and frequency of the bouncers.

The speed of the balls wasn’t being measured at that particular match, so the Coroner asked an expert umpire, Simon Taufel, to estimate the speed. He said that fast bowlers sent the ball down the wicket between 120 and 140 kilometres an hour. The ball itself was a hard projectile weighing 156 g.

Taufel explained that he could gauge if a specific style of bowling represented a risk for the batsman and whether it complied with the rules by looking at ‘visual cues — where the ball landed on the pitch; the climb angle of the ball; the gap between the batsman ducking and the ball; the continued trajectory of the ball once it passed the batsman; and the positioning of the wicket keeper.’

Bowler Sean Abbott, the only key player on the field who wasn’t required to give evidence at the inquest, provided his first comments since his ball had caused so much heartache — for him and everybody else. He described how he ran to the end of the pitch and held Hughes’s head after he collapsed.

In a short, sad statement tabled in evidence to the inquest, Abbott said that afterwards he felt confused, in a daze, and was upset and ‘super tired’ for days after the freak incident. He said he didn’t recall much that had happened that day, such as the lunch session before the fatal incident.

He described conditions on the field at the Sydney Cricket Ground as unexceptional. ‘I don’t remember the ball being fast or slow. Maybe the wicket was a little bit slower that day. I think Phillip was a bit early through the shot. If a batsman is early through the shot, it makes me think that the ball is slower than they’d anticipated. After Phillip was struck, I saw him start to sway and I ran to the other end of the pitch and I held the right side of his head with my left hand.’

Abbott said, ‘I cannot recall any sledging on the day. Once in the change room, I felt confused and upset, I had a headache. People kept coming up to me, but I cannot remember what they said. It was all a bit of a blur and I felt like I was in a bit of a daze. I felt super tired. These feelings stayed with me for the next few days.’

And eventually, to have to go back out there, game after game, and play on. It’s a heavy burden for a mate to bear, accident or not.

Phillip’s family also expressed concern about the ‘sledging’ that Phillip’s brother Jason had been told about. Were people telling the truth about what had happened?

Cricketer Matt Day, a close friend of Phillip Hughes, backed Jason’s claim in a statement provided to the Coroner. In sensational evidence, he said he’d been sitting with a group of players at the SCG, and Bollinger had been part of the group. Day described the conversation:

There was general discussion regarding the circumstances of the match. At one stage, Doug Bollinger said words to the effect of: ‘One of my sledges was “I am going to kill you”. I can’t believe I said that. I’ve said things like that in the past but I am never going to say it again.’

‘Although I am used to sledging in cricket matches,’ Day said, ‘I was stunned by Doug’s comment. I did not respond, nor did any of the other players.’ He said he’d told Jason Hughes, and Jason said ‘words to the effect of “Tom Cooper told me the same thing”.’

Day added that he’d been in a cab home with Trent Johnston, then assistant NSW coach and now head coach, and that in the course of the taxi ride Johnston had said he was ‘struggling with the fact that I was a big part of the plan that NSW adopted, that was to bowl short to Phil, and that eventually ended up with him being struck’.

After Day’s statements about sledging, the atmosphere in the SCG bar became bitter. Bollinger and Johnstone felt that Day had tossed them a curveball. But if the Hughes family were expecting the Coroner to investigate these allegations further, he seemed disinclined to do so. Matt Day wasn’t cross-examined on his statement, and in his findings, the Coroner said:

As all of the evidence about how Phillip was batting on that afternoon indicated he wasn’t intimidated or unsettled — on the contrary he seems to have been batting very comfortably — there was no need to try and resolve the conflict in the evidence about what may have been said. It is apparent that even were the threat made, it had no effect on Phillip.

The Coroner also spent a lot of time discussing the rules of cricket, but they had little impact on the overall finding. He did discuss the need for the umpire to monitor the number and trajectory of bouncers:

Repetition of high balls may pose a danger even if the batsman appears to be dealing with them competently because receiving them continually is likely to unsettle him, wear down his resistance through frustration and may as a result, eventually put him at risk. The umpires are urged to judge whether repetition of high balls is taking its toll of the striker, or when it is simply of itself becoming excessive.

But here again, the Coroner found that the speed and trajectory of the ball had ‘little relevance to the mechanism of Phillip’s death’, though it might be ‘relevant to the design of protective equipment’.

The Hughes family became very unhappy with some of the evidence and provided detailed letters to the Coroner, expressing their concerns on a number of issues. On the last day of the inquiry, when they heard counsel assisting Kristina Stern advise the Coroner that he wasn’t obliged to make any comments about sledging, or about the course of the game leading up to Phillip’s injury, Phillip’s parents got up and walked out. Ms Stern said that ‘the risks to Phillip were not exacerbated by any such matters’ and declared the death an accident.

On behalf of the Hughes family, Greg Melick denied Ms Stern’s assertions that the bowling style didn’t exacerbate the accident. He said the Hughes family believed sustained short-pitched bowling had ‘increased the risk of injury to Phillip’. The family acknowledged that short-pitched bowling was a ‘legitimate tactic’, but they believed that nine short balls in a row went ‘too far’.

He said the family also believed sledging still occurred, and the fact that every player who testified denied anything was said ‘must cast serious doubts over other evidence’. He said the Hughes family was disappointed with the testimony of players, including David Warner, Tom Cooper, Brad Haddin, and Doug Bollinger.

‘There was sledging,’ Mr Melick said. ‘[It] is part of cricket at times. And it will continue to be so. The concern is why wasn’t that remembered by the players? It has never been suggested that the words of Doug Bollinger implied intent. Remember that Jason Hughes was told this very shortly after the event. These are conversations that occurred within a number of days. It’s not suggested any sledging on the day was responsible for the accident.’

He also observed that their official statements, which were ‘made in the presence of legal representatives’, were riddled with phrases such as ‘I don’t recall’ and ‘I don’t remember’.

‘There were seven such comments from David Warner, and eight from Tom Cooper,’ he said. ‘To suggest there was no sledging beggars belief.’

I gather that in the SCG dressing rooms, there’s a plaque on the wall in memory of Phillip Hughes, and players tap it or salute it with their bats as they go past to take up their positions at the crease. Phillip is still a member of the cricketing family and will never be forgotten, even by non cricket-tragics like me. I haven’t been able to talk with Phillip’s family, but speaking as ‘just a mother’, I think that if he had been my son, I too would have had trouble dealing with the vested interests of Cricket Australia, especially seeing how Phillip Hughes had become a Cricket Australia ‘brand’, no longer belonging to the Hughes family, but an Australian cricketing symbol — backyard kid to baggy green.

On the last day of the inquest Cricket Australia released a statement saying exactly that. ‘The Australian nation and the cricket world reeled in shock and grief at Phillip’s passing. His journey from the backyard to the baggy green cap personified the Australian cricketing dream.’

As this tribute was read to the court, Phillip’s sister Megan, tears in her eyes, walked quickly through the gallery and out of the courtroom.

The Coroner, Michael Barnes, found that Phillip had died accidentally, but he also made some specific recommendations to improve the safety of the game. He recommended a review of ‘dangerous and unfair bowling’ and suggested that ‘umpires be provided with more guidance as to how the laws should be applied’. He specifically observed that, to avoid a repetition of Phillip’s injury, Cricket Australia should research neck protectors and if possible mandate one ‘for wearing at least in all first-class cricket matches’.

He also recommended that the daily medical briefing of staff be reviewed to ensure that all key staff members were aware of its purpose, and that umpires be trained ‘so that they can ensure medical assistance is summoned effectively and expeditiously’.

The Coroner closed the inquest by observing that the family’s grief had been ‘exacerbated by their belief that unfair play had contributed to [Phillip’s] death’. He understood that the family disagreed with some of the evidence given at the inquest, but he reached out to them in their pain, saying:

It is hoped that they accept the compelling evidence that the rules were complied with; that Phillip was excelling at the crease as he so often did, and that his death was a tragic accident. Nothing can undo the source of their never ending sorrow but hopefully, in the future, the knowledge that Phillip was loved and admired by so many and that his death has led to changes that will make cricket safer will be of some comfort.