There’s a bloke in the town of Dorrigo who tells people he got Phillip Hughes out once. Takes a sip of his beer and admits he was 32 years old at the time and Phillip was 12. He takes another sip and adds that the kid had already scored a hundred. He says it is his only Test wicket. There are a few in the area with the same boast, but not many, because Phillip didn’t make a habit of getting out.
PHILLIP HUGHES STARTED TURNING out for the Macksville A-grade team when he was 12. The sight of the boy wandering out to the wicket initially caused some looks and words between opponents and spectators. He may have been small, but sledging only doubled Phillip’s determination. The Year Seven student went on to score 38 runs, then completed two stumpings and two catches behind the wicket.
These games against men were important. He was a kid who wanted to take on the world, and he would start by taking on the men’s world of his home district.
‘I was very young and they were grown men from 20 to 35 and even 40, and on the synthetic wickets back home and the cement wickets, when they came in with the new ball, and they were grown men and I was only a young guy, they wouldn’t hold back and I think that gave me a lot of confidence moving down to the city,’ Phillip said nearly a decade later in an interview with cricket writer Mike Coward recorded for the Bradman Museum. ‘They’d give it to the young guys and I think that was something I used to thrive on and that just gave me that confidence.’
Cousin Nino Ramunno says Phillip was growing into a young man ready to engage with life in all its roughness. ‘The worst thing you could ever do to Phillip was sledge him. He would just become quiet and more focused.’
After making centuries from one end of the state to the other in the previous season, his reputation was widespread. Phillip had only just started high school, and he was still a child. He might have batted like a veteran, but away from the game he was still a cheeky kid who rode his pushbike about town with his mates, went fishing, got swooped by magpies and whispered about the forbidden wonders of girls. At the exchange in Cobram Barooga, he had been called on, as NSW captain, to address the teams at the end of the tournament. Centre-stage was not his thing, but he handled it almost as easily as he’d handled the bowling.
On his return to Macksville that January, he was called on to brush up on his public speaking again. Phillip was awarded the Junior Sportsperson of the Year Award at the Australia Day ceremonies in the Ex-Services Club. Andrew Stoner, the local member, wrote to the young cricketer, telling him he could invite friends and family and would be expected to say a few words. Phillip rose to get his certificate after the Macksville Bowlers Ladies Number 3 team (team of the year), and acquitted himself with quiet confidence.
Phillip started secondary school at Macksville High, directly opposite St Patrick’s Primary School, two years behind Jason. By day Phillip shared his classroom with boys, but on the weekends he was rubbing shoulders with men. Even though he cracked a foot larking around at school early in the summer and missed some cricket, Phillip was soon back in the swing of things.
He handled A-grade cricket on Saturday afternoons in the valley. After two half-centuries, the youngest player in the entire competition top-scored with 36 in the first innings of the grand final and followed it up with a determined 23 in the second, but he couldn’t get the men over the line.
Picked in the Nambucca Bellingen Under-14 rep team that summer, he travelled to the Gloucester Carnival and notched scores of 40, 73, 70, 65 and 49 against teams from Manning, Penrith, Armidale, Gloucester and Sydney. He didn’t play in the Under-14 inter-district grand final but made a controversial appearance in Jason’s Under-16 team that February.
Phillip was originally not picked, as he had played in the lower age group all season. Before the match, he went camping on a Bellingen property with a mate. Greg thinks Phillip might have had an eye on the farmer’s daughter. The Under-16s were a good team, with many of the players representing at a higher level, but on the Saturday before the final one of them got sick and withdrew from the game. Warwick Lawrence, who had asked Phillip to open in the Under-12s two years before, was coaching the side.
‘Where’s Phillip?’ he asked Greg. ‘I want him to play tomorrow.’
Greg explained he was away camping, but Warwick wasn’t put off. They came up with a plan that Greg would ring the farmer, who would take Phillip next morning to the side of the highway where coach Lawrence could pick him up. The family got his cricket gear together, and all arrived at the ground to take on Coffs Harbour in the final.
The Coffs people were furious when they saw the short kid warming up with the Under-16s. They knew exactly who he was and complained bitterly. The rules were that you couldn’t drop down and play for a team you hadn’t been in that season. There was, however, nothing to stop you moving up.
Their misgivings proved well founded. Phillip opened the batting and made 104 as Nambucca Bellingen racked up an imposing 297. Josh Lawrence got 66 and Jason, who was captain and had been itching to get a hit, blasted a quickfire 32 in the final overs.
‘He absolutely whacked them that day,’ Jason says. ‘I remember he brought up his 100 with a shot through the gully. I was spewing for the first 30 overs because all I wanted to do was get in there and have a hit, but he wasn’t going anywhere.’
An overwhelmed Coffs could manage only 135.
The following month, the Under-14s made a trip south to Kempsey to play the local team at the Verge Street Oval for the Kempsey Observer Shield. Phillip scored 120 not out, 20 more than Kempsey managed in reply.
Too old now for the Under-12 state team, he had nowhere to go at the highest level in junior cricket. The states had introduced an Under-15 carnival the year before, but there was no room in the calendar for the schools to sort out the best players in 2001–02. They invited boys eligible for the next season to try out at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Somehow the coaches chose 25 out of hundreds of hopefuls and sent them to Northbridge for a trial match the next day.
One of the fathers at the Northbridge trial remembers seeing a small boy walk into the indoor centre with a cricket bag twice his size and thinking he would not have a hope – and then watching in amazement as bowler after bowler failed to penetrate his defence. Phillip batted well, but was not picked among the state’s best players up to two years older than him.
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SCHOOL CRICKET OFFERED A chance to play with Jason under the coaching of Barry Lockyer, who had come to Macksville High the year before. Barry played cricket locally and knew the younger brother was as good as the elder. The three became good friends, and if Greg couldn’t drive the boys to a carnival, Barry did it. They called him ‘Baz’ but tried to do the right thing and refer to him as ‘Mr Lockyer’ at school.
‘I tell my son I have a Test wicket,’ Barry says. ‘I managed to bowl Phillip in the nets once. It was the only time it happened.’
Macksville High played in the Combined High Schools competition, which linked with the Alan Davidson Shield against teams from Sydney. With Phillip and Jason, Macksville became a force. Barry Lockyer remembers the day they had to play Mullumbimby in a final at Thompson Oval, Brunswick Heads. Mullumbimby, having only made 149 thanks to some good bowling by Jason, decided the best way to get out the young opener and win the game was to attack him verbally and physically.
‘They absolutely gave it to him that day,’ Barry recalls. ‘These blokes could bowl pretty quick, he was only a little fella and there were some big mouths out there. I thought, “This will be interesting”. Phillip only got 34 not out, but he carried us that day: he put his head down, turned the strike over and basically got us home. Jason got about 30 runs. Phillip and Jason were calm fellows. Nothing rattled them.’
Simon Keen, who would go on to play for NSW and the Sydney Sixers, was at Westfield Sports High School, a selective school that specialised in sport. He remembers encountering the Hughes brothers around this period. ‘They played us in the Davidson Shield, it was a semi or a final [in Dubbo]. Phil was in Year 9, batting against Year 11 and 12 bowlers. Our team was sledging him, bowling at his body, but he was so determined, he just never wanted to get out. He was not satisfied with just making some runs. You could see how other guys felt they had accomplished something when they got 60 or 70, but not him.’
Phillip and his brother had driven to Dubbo with Barry Lockyer; others had gone with the principal or parents who could make the eight-hour drive. To keep the costs down, they stayed at a hostel. They lost to Westfield but finished third in the state, an incredible achievement for such a tiny school.
After the semifinal, the umpire asked Barry how many kids attended Macksville High.
‘Oh, about 700, but it’s co-ed, so it’s really 350.’
‘How many play cricket?’
‘You are looking at them.’
Macksville High never held a try-out; the 11 or 12 kids Lockyer told to come to training got a game. Thanks to the efforts of Phillip, Jason and a few of their mates, they had beaten schools with specialist coaches and far greater resources.
Over the years, Jason and Phillip put together some big partnerships. In January 2003, they played for Macksville A-grade against Bowraville at the Thistle Park ground behind their grandparents’ house. It was a grand day for the family. Phillip, who was 14, scored his first A-grade century and Jason made 113. They put on 213, which the Guardian News said ‘would have to go down as the highest by brothers in local A-grade cricket’. The paper also hazarded a guess that Phillip was the youngest player to get a century at that level.
Jason recalls that they didn’t really say too much when batting.
‘He was quiet. I would sometimes say something to him about not getting out or not playing a certain shot and he would nod, but he was a cheeky little bugger and he would go and play it anyway and get a four.’
Years later, after Phillip had made his debut for Australia in South Africa, cricket writer Mike Coward asked him if he was scared to face the new ball as a boy playing against men.
‘No, not overly sometimes, you can be if there’s real quick bowler and there is a hard ball, a new ball. But that’s something I’ve always loved, I see it as a challenge. Go out there and show myself as early as I could, so that’s why I liked it.’
Jason finished the summer with 705 A-grade runs at 117.6 (highest aggregate and second-highest average), while Phillip finished with 422 runs at 70.3.
Phillip was bouncing up and down the age groups. On Sundays, in Under-14 representative cricket, he took Nambucca Bellingen to an inter-district final win with an unbeaten century to cap a season of 408 runs – his Australian Test number – at an average of 139. Through his performances for Macksville High against boys up to 18 years old, he made the NSW All Schools 15 Years cricket team to compete in the Australian Schools Championship in Bathurst.
Phillip shaking hands with future Sheffield Shield player Michael Hill at the Under-15s All-Schools Championship at Adelaide Oval No. 2.
Simon Keen said that by now everyone had heard of the prodigy from Macksville. ‘He had an aura. Coming from the country, people spoke about him. There were Chinese whispers; all the kids talked about this kid from the country.’
Phillip survived for an hour, after which the sun had dried the pitch. When things settled down, he got going and was eventually retired. The harder it was, the more determined he became.
Phillip had a reasonable tournament in Bathurst, but nothing outstanding. His scores of 30, 26, 62 and 33 could not be considered a failure, but others shone more brightly, including Shannon Hurn, who made 111 for South Australia against NSW. Hurn eventually quit cricket for a chance to play in the Australian Football League, going on to captain the West Coast Eagles.
Simon Keen recalls batting with Phillip when a spectator fell victim to his cut shot. ‘My mum and dad and Phil’s dad were in a tent in line with his cut shot. The ball just flew off his bat. My mum didn’t have time to move, and it hit her. She had to get taken away. Phil was really apologetic, he was so worried that she was going to be okay. It got her in the face and cut her eyebrow.’
Phillip had set the bar so high that what looked like an ordinary performance was in fact above average. His 30 opening the batting with Chris Ridley in the first match helped set a NSW first-wicket record (101) and he also set a fifth-wicket partnership record (55) with Manjot Singh, who would become a good friend and a club and state teammate. The selectors were impressed enough to include him in their Australian Under-15 side. While it existed in name only, it was his first ‘national’ representation.
The following summer started with the usual chaos of carnivals – the Under-17 Northern Country Carnival on the Central Coast, the Bradman Cup on the South Coast – and meanwhile Phillip was fitting in Macksville A-grade games, breaking a record with a 221-run partnership with Jason against Bowraville, who must have been heartily sick of the both of them. Two days later, Phillip made 108 against Wauchope High School, who replied with 98.
It might have been tempting to remain a big wheel on the coast – he averaged 189 that 2003–04 season for Nambucca Bellingen – but Phillip now had a clear goal to play cricket for Australia. When he’d plotted it with Shariful Islam, he wasn’t joking. Nobody on the north coast had any doubt, and Sydney got the message through the state Under-12s and Under-15s.
It was time to take things up another notch.
