Test cricket is meant to be all about legacy.
Players are meant to work their whole lives for a spot in the national side, and then spend a decade building their personal legend before moving on to the rest of their days.
For Matthew Hayden that was cooking, for Shane Warne it was poker, for Glen McGrath it was fundraising.
Boffins and tragics are meant to spend hours at a time, be it at the pub, on the internet or watching a game from the stands, debating which players deserve what platitudes and reminiscing about great matches, great days, great sessions, great innings and great overs.
Phillip Hughes will not experience any of that.
Sure, in the years to come, we’ll be reminiscing about the spark that went out, the fuse that too early blew.
But we’ll be doing it with tears in our eyes. Not tears of nostalgia, or long forgotten raw joy, but tears of grief for a story that never reached its logical conclusion.
The traditional way for a cricketer to be referenced on the score sheet is for their first and middle initial to be written before their last name.
SR Tendulkar, BC Lara, SR Waugh, DG Bradman, WG Grace.
Aside from the brave statement issued by the equally courageous Michael Clarke, all the public have heard from the grieving Hughes family is that they would prefer their son be referenced as Phillip, rather than Phil, in posterity.
He was meant to be a champion. Whatever you thought of his batting and often inconsistent performances, Phillip’s early debut at just 20 years of age was supposed to mean that time would be on his side.
Indeed, when Phillip faced his final ball, he was five days short of his 26th birthday.
Now, that legacy will never be realised.
Yes, we will remember him. We’ll remember his two centuries in South Africa and his brave innings alongside Ashton Agar when the latter fell just short of a debut century at Trent Bridge in 2013.
Whilst Agar’s innings has already gone down in Ashes folklore, Hughes’ measured, mature and thoughtfully accomplished knock can not, and will not, and has not, gone unacknowledged.
On what has been a fairly tough week for myself on a personal level, I can’t help but reflect upon both the gift and the futility of my heartbeat and the time that I hopefully yet have on my side.
For Phillip Hughes, the spirit of #408, his legacy will be one of what could have been. What should have been. For him, and for us.
He died doing what he loved. His last conscious moments were at the crease, that patch of hallowed dried grass in front of three vulnerable stumps where he had spent most of his life: honing his craft for the rewards that will now never come. Let it be known that, before he fell, he was playing the kind of cricket that will be remembered as his hallmark: Unorthodox, brave and ambitious.
The same goes for Sean Abbott. Here was a man doing his job, and doing it well. The sad loss of Phillip Hughes, and the tragic circumstances that have led to it, should not mean that Sean is held in any way responsible. Indeed, a great tragedy would for us to another career cut short like Phillip’s was. Lets get behind him, show him that we care, and hope that in time he can learn to cope with his grief and carry Phillip’s spirit with him.
Phillip Hughes will never know a life after cricket. He will never be given the chance to commentate, to go home and share a career’s worth of achievements, to forge a career and a legacy like so many talented people before him. He will always have a place in the game, but rather than a comma, there will be a full stop after his name.
But we will remember him, and so will the future custodians of the game of cricket.
PJ Hughes, 63. Not out.
Dean GOLDSTEIN 