A precocious talent, a humble man

Simon Katich had the burners on, ready to steal a quick single. Surely that would be the play that was coming? His opening partner, 20-year-old Phillip Hughes, had just smashed spinner Paul Harris over long-on for six. But now Hughes was on 99. He was in his second Test. He would be nervous, wouldn't he? How could he not be?

Graeme Smith tried to play on those expected nerves. He brought the fielder up from the deep midwicket fence, building the pressure. Hughes saw the move, noted the big gap over the top if he was willing to go for it.

Harris sent down the next ball and Hughes gave it everything. He got down on one knee, opened the front leg and lifted Harris high and long over midwicket, over the boundary for a second consecutive six to take him to his first Test century.

"When I saw him launch it I thought, what am I worried about? I should have realised the young bloke is going to belt it out of the ground with gay abandon," Katich said later that day.

Katich, like everyone in South Africa for that 2009 tour, became used to Hughes doing extraordinary things. Whether down on one knee to smash the fast bowlers through cover, or up off his toes to help a steep-bouncing ball on its way over the cordon, Hughes revelled in the unconventional. These were not garden-variety fast bowlers, but Dale Steyn, Makhaya Ntini and Morne Morkel.

Great things were expected of Hughes when he embarked on the tour. Matthew Hayden had retired and a new opening partner was needed for Katich. Hughes had already been wowing observers for New South Wales for nearly two seasons. He had moved to Sydney at 16 from the family's banana farm at Macksville in northern New South Wales to pursue his cricket.

By the time he walked out for his Test debut at the Wanderers, he already had 1647 first-class runs at 58.82, including five centuries. Then South Africa coach Mickey Arthur sent a spy to the tour match in Potchefstroom at the start of the trip. He wanted his man "hiding behind the sightscreen with his camera" to gather some intelligence on the new opener.

What he saw was Hughes being Hughes. His first boundary for his country was smacked over point when fast bowler Craig Alexander gave him some width. A half-century came in the second innings before he retired, the team content with his preparation for a Test debut.

Hughes volunteered to face the first ball in Johannesburg, if Katich would agree to field at short-leg. Both men were happy with the deal. After all, Katich said before the series began that Hughes possessed the kind of maturity that he had seen in only two other Australian batsmen at such a young age in the modern era. Those men were Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke.

Not that Hughes' first day of Test cricket went to plan. The thrill of being presented with his baggy green by Ricky Ponting, alongside fellow debutants Marcus North and Ben Hilfenhaus, soon dissipated when he was out for a duck in the first over of the match. Steyn banged one in short and Hughes jumped at it, trying to slash him over the slips, and tickled a catch through to the wicketkeeper Mark Boucher.

It didn't stop him playing the same way in the second innings and some of those shots started to come off. South Africa's fast men went at him with short stuff, certain that they had found his weakness. But Hughes had been handling bouncers since he was a child playing against men back home in the country; at 170 centimetres he looked an easy target, but in truth he liked the scoring opportunities.

"I love it. I love them to come hard at me," Hughes said after making 75 in the second innings of his debut. "I'm only a short left-hand opening batsman. They like to come in pretty hard but I love that challenge."

They came hard at him again in the second Test in Durban. At times Hughes looked like one of the bananas from his family farm as he arched his back and swayed out of the way. At other times he used the pace to score, and score heavily. His two centuries in Durban were vastly different; the juicy Kingsmead pitch made his job much harder in the second innings.

In the first, he raced from 89 to 105 in four balls. In the second, he took 169 deliveries to go from 50 to 100. This was Hughes showing he could tough it out, sitting on the suddenly more dangerous spinner Harris and pinching runs where he could. His first-innings hundred made him a younger Test centurion than Don Bradman; his second-innings century made him the youngest man ever to score a ton in each innings of a Test.

You could witness the bravado with which Hughes usually batted, observe the diamond earring, and assume his precocious talent went alongside a cocky attitude. Nothing could be further from the truth. After he sliced a catch to third man off Ntini for 160 in the second innings, left foot on leg stump and right foot on its way towards midwicket, Hughes spoke to the media in a soft voice, shy and humble.

"It's very exciting," he said of breaking George Headley's 79-year-old record as the youngest man to score two centuries in a Test. "I didn't actually know about that record until I walked into the sheds and a couple of guys mentioned it but it was one very special moment."

At the time, it seemed Hughes' career would be full of special moments, that he was destined for big things. We know now that it would be a career of ups and downs, ins and outs, and would never quite hit those highs at Test level again. Perhaps he would have one day, but now that day will never come.

Like all players from both teams, Hughes had worn a black armband during that Durban Test. A minute's silence had been held before the match began, heads bowed, reflecting on the terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka team and match officials that had occurred in Pakistan only days before. It was one of cricket's greatest tragedies.

Now, mournful silences will be observed around the world and black armbands worn for Hughes, the victim of another.