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Players gather in Sydney to grieve

There has never been a team meeting quite like it. Australia's Test squad met in the SCG dressing room on Friday morning, as they and their forebears have done hundreds of times over the past century or more. This time, it was to mourn for Phillip Hughes.

Daniel Brettig
Daniel Brettig
28-Nov-2014
Michael Clarke and Dr Peter Brukner at the SCG on Friday  •  Getty Images

Michael Clarke and Dr Peter Brukner at the SCG on Friday  •  Getty Images

There has never been a team meeting quite like it.
Australia's Test squad met in the SCG dressing room on Friday morning, as they and their forebears have done hundreds of times over the past century or more. Usually such meetings discuss plans for opposition batsmen, and bowlers, mental approaches and mottos to keep everyone on the task. They are all about cricket.
This time, it was not the coach Darren Lehmann nor the captain Michael Clarke who took the floor. Instead it was the melancholy duty of the team doctor Peter Brukner to run the players through what had happened to Phillip Hughes, and the vexing task of the team psychologist Michael Lloyd to counsel them on how to move forward from this indescribable event.
For a few hours the players sat in the room, talking, crying or simply contemplating. Talk of resuming cricket was far less pertinent than that of honouring Hughes. Combat can wait - there must first be grieving, remembering and healing.
Australian cricket has taken what it can from the familiarity of the grand old ground, huddling around the SCG and its Members Stand in particular over the past 24 hours.
Within a few minutes of Hughes' death being announced on Thursday, they began to stream into the ground. Players, coaches, support staff, administrators, family and friends all set out for the cricket ground with a sense of terrible grief but also simple logic. There was no better place for the cricket people of New South Wales and Australia to be when they were in such unforeseeable pain.
Almost all of the current team was present, including Clarke, Brad Haddin, Mitchell Johnson, Steve Smith, David Warner, Ryan Harris, Peter Siddle and James Pattinson. Past players such as Glenn McGrath, Stuart Clark, Simon Katich and Phil Jaques mixed with coaches including Lehmann and his assistant Craig McDermott.
Sean Abbott was there too, comforted with words and embraces, including those of the Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland. It is often easy to forget that Sutherland was once a state fast medium bowler himself, who tried naturally and routinely to bounce out impish opposition batsmen just as Abbott had done on Tuesday.
"It's been fantastic the way people have shown concern for Sean," Sutherland said. "Sean's holding up really well - I had a chat to him last night and I was incredibly impressed by the way he was holding himself and his maturity.
"But the point is this is not a moment in time for him, this is a grieving process that will affect people in different ways. What we will do and the relevant experts will do will be to provide Sean with all the support he needs to work through this. but right now I can say he's holding up very well and I'm incredibly impressed with him."
The gathering was spontaneous, lacking a central speech or address, but possessing a shared sense that this was place all needed to be. Around 200 people gathered as late afternoon stretched into evening. Some sat in the home dressing room, some leaned by the dressing room door. All passed through the Members Bar, which the SCG Trust had staffed and stocked at short notice to meet the needs of the moment.
Memories of Hughes were shared, most drawing laughter, some drawing tears. "I think reflections last night were a little bit about what has happened in such a short space of time," Sutherland said. "But I also know there were some great stories being told and quite a lot of laughter about the cheeky little boy who came down from Macksville and had the highest ambitions for himself and his cricket. He will always be remembered."
Every few minutes, the mourners wandered out onto the field of play in twos and threes, trying to make sense of an event that has mixed cricket with tragedy in the most horrible way. The centre of the SCG is where so many of these men have made their names. It is now a place made even more sacred in their eyes by the falling of a comrade.

Daniel Brettig is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. @danbrettig