THE PHILLIP HUGHES STORY is without a happy ending. In the way stories are told, it does not have a proper conclusion at all. It has a beginning, and the start of a middle, but the rest was taken away in the week before his twenty-sixth birthday. When Australia grieved for Phillip, a part of its sorrow was for the loss of possibility, as if the country had been absorbed in the first pages of a book, only to find that the rest had been ripped out.
There were many endings yet to be written. By the consensus of Phillip’s peers in cricket, his story would have been one of precocious glory, severe trials and the hardening that came from disappointment and time in the wilderness, finally crowned by a comeback leading to 100 Test matches, 8000 runs for Australia, perhaps a World Cup. This was the story designed and expected by the leaders of Australian cricket, the selectors and the players, and would have followed a path trodden by Steve Waugh, Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke, Justin Langer and a host of Australian greats.
Nothing is inevitable. Perhaps Phillip did not reach those heights, instead his career playing out in enduring triumph in first-class but not international cricket, like those of David Hookes or Darren Lehmann. Perhaps he retired early, left cricket behind, and followed his passion for cattle-farming. Perhaps he did all of the above, and more.
Some story was waiting to be written. Instead, there is only a piece of a story, a story unfinished, with the ending we know but also the endings we can imagine.
One thing is certain. If Phillip had grown to his cricketing maturity and enjoyed the full arc of a career, his biography would be that of a cricketer, above all, as cricketers’ stories are. Instead, because of the circumstances, this is a story about a boy and a man who remain forever young, and because his future as a cricketer was unfulfilled, his qualities as a human being come to the fore.
The impact of Phillip’s death left a question hanging over Australia: what was it about Phillip Hughes that caused such sorrow? There were general themes of shock, the loss of innocence over our national game, which was known to be dangerous but not thought to be lethal, and the place sportsmen hold in our hearts.
But there was also something more, something unique to this young man. The grief over Phillip Hughes seemed somehow deeper than it would have been over any number of other public figures who had achieved more in their fields. There was some knowledge of him as a person, held inside the cricket community and the closer circle of his family and friends, that radiated outwards and was intuited by the wider world.
This book seeks to answer that question. Phillip Hughes might have become an archetype: a country boy, a child prodigy who flew high and fell before his time. But Phillip was also himself, a singular person; he remains the possession of those who knew him best, who still want to hold him close and refuse to have him taken away.
When looked at in the light of who he was, Phillip’s story is not as incomplete as it might seem. His twenty-six years minus three days were rich and full of love and friendship and achievement. His is a story that highlights junior, school, country, club, ‘pathways’ and interstate cricket in this country. These levels are unique incubators for elite sportspeople, but they are also competitive arenas in their own right.
This was where Phillip was so often seen at his best, and where the stories began. Those who knew him best knew him through his games for New South Wales and South Australia, for his schools and his clubs and his underage teams, and in its way his career was a tribute to the calibre of those levels of Australian cricket. They deserve to be celebrated and not left in the shade, as they might have been in his story had Phillip Hughes gone on to play for Australia for another ten years.
The dominant voices in this story are those who were closest to Phillip, who will always feel his loss the most keenly. Many lay claim to a feeling that he was their intimate friend, which shows the type of person he was: a boy and a young man with the gift of collecting friendship. He had many, many friends.
Phillip’s journey is done, belonging to him and nobody else, but in his own way, he has left much for us to remember and celebrate.
MALCOLM KNOX & PETER LALOR