By: Sana Samad,
On November 27, 2014 the world became in pain when they listened the death news of Phillip Hughes, an Australian cricketer. Phillip Hughes was 25 years old and was just three days away from his 26th birthday, but he was felled by a bouncer from a bowler Sean Abbot during a Sheffield Shield game, and was sent to induce coma, and could not survive. Hughes career was started in 2009 at the age of 20 against South Africa, and second test he scored his first test century. In the second inning of the same match Hughes scored 160 runs and became the youngest cricketer in history to score centuries in both innings of a test match. On 2013, he made his ODI debut, and scored a century, and was the first Australian batsman to hit a century in his ODI debut.
Phillip Hughes was born on 30 November 1988 in Mocksville, New South Wales and his father was a banana farmer. His career in cricket was started at the age of 12, in junior cricket for Mocksville cricket club. At the same match Hughes scored a century. He continued playing, and in 2007, he went to Sydney to play for Western Suburbs District Club in Sydney. During this season he scored 752 runs at the average of 35.81 with the highest score of 142. Then he was selected for Australian at the 2008 ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup.
Then his first class career just went while that he made his List A Career, and in his debut he scored 68 top scorer for his team. Then in 2009, Hughes was successful to make his first limited century by scoring 119. Though during the period of 2014 he was playing for Australia, he continued to play in List A Career, and on 29 July 2014, he made a double century (202 not out from 151 balls) against South Africa A in Darwin.
After continuously showing good performance in domestic level, Hughes was called by the Australian cricket to replace Mathew Hadden on Australia tour of South Africa in 2009. This was the chance of Hughes to make his career in international level. In his first test match, he was unsuccessful to score a single run when he was dismissed for a duck by Dale Steyn off just the fourth ball of the match. The second inning was the only chance for Hughes to have place in the team, so he scored 75 runs including 11 fours and a six. In the second match, he scored two hundreds in both innings which made him the youngest player to score two centuries in both innings of the test.
In the year 2010, Phillip Hughes was awarded the promising young cricketer from his local district. Hughes was a fringe player for the next year, and continued playing to cover other injured batsman. During the 2010-2011 Ashes, Hughes was not selected in the squad, but he was called for the third test to replace injured Simon Katich. Then he was selected as a regular player for Australia as following the year, playing in the last three matches of Ashes, tour of Sri Lanka and South Africa then a home series against New Zealand.
Due to his performance in test, he was selected for ODI team on January 2013. Hughes scored 112 in his ODI debut and became the first Australian batsman to reach a century on debut. He played other ODI matches, but his last ODI series was against Pakistan in the UAE in October 2014. During the tour of UAE, Hughes also made his first and only Twenty20 International appearance for Australia against Pakistan in the United Erab Emirates on 5th October 2014. Then he was selected for upcoming Indian series in the next month November and also for the World Cup 2015, but could not succeed to have involvement.
In the month of November Hughes was glad about his career which was going well since the debut. Unfortunately, he never knew that this month was going be his last month of his career. Phil Hughes was continuously playing well, and was creating records for Australia and in the history of cricket. He also wanted to have enrollment in World Cups and other mega tournament to create more records for himself, Australia and in international level. Unfortunately, he could not succeed to continue his journey when he was hit by a bouncer in the neck which caused his entire career. His whole dreams were vanished with just one bouncer.
The Australian doctors estimated that only 100 such cases have been recorded with only one case was reported as a result of cricket ball. The entire world paid tribute to Phil Hughes and many matches were postponed. Around the world, photos were posted of their bats on social media to pay tribute to Hughes. During the match, Phil Hughes was not out at 63, so the Australia cricket announced and called 63 and not out in the honor of Hughes.
Published in Makran Times.
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