RIP Phillip Hughes
27-Nov-2014
Self-taught cricketing prodigy, fun-loving team man, farm boy at heart. Splicing together archival footage from interviews, matches and Australia training sessions, Cricket Australia have put together a moving video tribute to Phillip Hughes.
Writing in The Age, Greg Baum calls Hughes' death "cricket's saddest day", a day that "makes us more mortal than yesterday".
This much we must believe, that Hughes' last thought simply was, here's four runs. Here's another step towards 100. Here's the Test door comng ajar again. That can and must be his family's consolation, that he died doing what he loved.
This much we can also believe, that he can barely have known what hit him. He lost consciousness on the pitch, and never regained it. He was not in pain when he died, and he had his family around him. He was 25 years old, and 63 not out. There was so much more to come.
Gideon Haigh writes in The Australian that Hughes was the "tomorrow cricketer who will now form part of history".
There was work for him to do (when he was dropped from the Test side) on that technique, not at that stage quite secure enough for the lures, baits and pitfalls of the top level. But we were all of us -- peers, pundits, selectors, spectators -- dealing in blue sky with Hughes.
He had the attitude. He had the look. Here was a cricketer, we told ourselves, with time on his side. Perhaps he assuaged his disappointments the same way. Certainly, he handled himself as first reserve with dignity, patience and enthusiasm. Thus the intensity of the shock at his loss.
The BBC looks at how helmets have improved over the years, and asks whether helmets can ever offer total protection.