63 not out Forever!

While I was watching Michael Clarke’s tribute to PhilipHughes, I got choked up a few times much like Michael himself did. The Australian Captain has lost his ‘little brother’, a fellow team-mate who he had gone out and batted in the middle with so many times. But it is not just his or Hughes’ family’s loss, it is a loss to the game we all love so much.

‘Is this what we call the spirit!’ Clarke asked in his speech. He was obviously talking about the spirit of Phil Hughes, but when I first heard it I thought he was referring to the ‘spirit of cricket’ which is so often talked about and used sometimes for the good and sometimes just for the sake of convenience to support one party’s action in a controversial situation. But Michael would not have been wrong even if he were talking about the spirit of the game of cricket. This is what spirit of cricket really is – condolences and support pouring in from all corners of the cricketing world (Clarke himself mentioned a few during his speech), the entire nation of Australia mourning the sad and untimely demise of one of their sons.

Phil was an upcoming talent with moderate success so far for the Australian national side and much of his cricketing career still ahead of him. He obviously was not the next big thing or the reigning superstar of cricket like Kohli, de Villiers, Amla etc. He was probably not many followers’ favorite cricketer like a few of his contemporaries are, yet he was a cricketer and that is more important to the cricketing fraternity than anything else. This feeling was clearly reflected in the tributes offered to him by cricket lovers across the globe spread across all sections of the society.

The Australian Cricket Board (ACB) was quick to delay the upcoming Sheffield Shield matches while suspending the ongoing game and to cancel the tour game preceding the first test match versus India which also has been rescheduled. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) provided its full cooperation and in fact offered for its players and support staff who are presently stationed in Australia to be a part of Phil’s funeral in his hometown Macksville. New Zealand and Pakistan decided not to take the field on the day following Phil’s death although it was in the middle of an ongoing test. Cricket Australia (CA) have adjusted their official scorecard to show Phil Hughes as 63 not out instead of 63 retired hurt. This shows how much the game and every single player means to the keepers and custodians of the game.

Spare a thought for the poor fellow Sean Abbott who delivered the bouncer that resulted in taking Phil Hughes’s life. Like Hughes, he is a young and promising cricketer who will now have to live with this fact for the rest of his life. He sure would need all the support he can get at this time to come out of this trauma and stand strong enough to be able to take the cherry in his hand and bowl the bouncer again to the best batsmen of the world. Never forget the omnipresent media who will always remind him of this incident even if he is spotted at a public place years later.

In the aftermath of this incident, there will be calls to ban the bouncer or short pitched deliveries which I think is like taking a key element of the game away from it. It would mean removing one of the most powerful tools from a bowler’s toolbox in today’s cricketing world which is already very unfairly balanced in favor of the batsmen (at least in the shorter formats). But at the same time the call to make helmets safer is legitimate for this beautiful game should not take lives of those who chose to live by it. Improving the quality of the helmets in today’s day and age should be very much possible given the kind of technology that exists.

The best way for Australian cricket team and every other to pay tribute to Phil Hughes would be to play the game the best they can. I would like to end this by quoting Aakash Chopra who said “Never felt so strongly about someone who I'd never met..” on his twitter account.

Picture Source: http://www.thehealthsite.com/