Phillip Hughes dies, aged 25

JGK wrote:

embee wrote:As much as we fans dislike Hughes there seems a fair bit of love from the players for him (reading the twitter comments).Warner and Clarke are supposedly good mates of his and who knows who else is.

Not great for the Oz team to deal with just before the Test series ...

Aye.   If the worst happens - Gods forbid - you'd wonder if they wouldn't call off the first Test.

BCCI says no

Just heard about it on the way home. Fingers crossed for a good outcome.

Virat Kohli
@imVkohli
Thoughts and prayers with Phil Hughes all the way. Fight it out mate. You are a top man. All the strength goes out to you and your family.

JGK wrote:The whole NSW v SA match has been abandoned.

the whole match or just the days play?

Nath wrote:

JGK wrote:The whole NSW v SA match has been abandoned.

the whole match or just the days play?

Whole match.

Understandable. No one's heart would be in it.

Horrible news to hear, thoughts and prayers for Phil and his family.

Just heard Peter Lalor on the radio; he was quite distressed after witnessing it. He said you get to know the players well and though it's a cliche, nobody would say a cross word regarding Hughes.

A woman in the crowd said that before they put the screen around him she saw blood coming out of his ear and it was horrible to watch.

They had to treat him for a prolonged time on the ground because his heart stopped. The doctors only moved him once they stabilized him.

Terrible for the player as most of them would have been his teammates at such stage.

Awful stuff. Fingers crossed for Phil Hughes.

Hard to believe this can happen in modern day cricket with the protective equipment they have, whatever the outcome it will surely lead to changes whether to helmets or rules about short pitched bowling.

It's a bit like the Bianchi incident in F1 in that everyone pretty much takes safety for granted until something like this happens. Anyway just hope he comes through without too much lasting damage. I remember similar incident many years back with Phil Simmons being hit by Syd Lawrence on a tour over here, he recovered to resume his international career.

Anyway if the outcome isn't good or still uncertain, hope Australia have the courage to call off their tour and fark what the BCCI think.

Horrible news. I think as cricketing viewers we've sort of become quite blase over the years about how dangerous the game can be - I remember finding Stuart Broad getting clonked in the grill last summer vaguely comical, even though, on reflection, he was actually in a relatively bad way.

Here's hoping Hughes pulls through. Shocking stuff.

Best wishes Phil.

Appalling news.

The faceplant (unprotected) may end up doing even more damage in the form of 'diffuse axonal injury', qv Michael Schumacher or David Hookes, than the initial blow, which sounds bad enough and which will have caused a base of skull fracture and an associated intracranial bleed ... these are the bits amenable to surgery.

I am also very worried by the reported 'down time' at the scene without spontaneous respiration. Do we know whether there was cardiac standstill? I hope not, or there are other possible long term outcomes, worse than death.

When I heard this news earlier today, through Zat, I was reminded of the appalling injury sustained by Graeme Watson in the 1971-2 series v ROW, when he was felled by a Tony Greig beamer. He was lucky to survive massive blood loss; he didn't lose consciousness at the ground.

'Praying' for some good news tomorrow.

Phil Hughes incident reminds us that cricket is a dangerous game

November 25, 2014 - 6:26PM
Malcolm Knox
Sports columnist

What we never see are the professional batsman's everyday bruises, the welts and grazes and cuts and deep purple contusions. Because nobody outside the changing room witnesses what happens to an average batsman's body on an average day facing fast bowling, the spectator might forget what a cricket ball can do.

Players know, and it is a shame that the machismo of elite sport places a veil of secrecy over the ever-present dangers they face. When Peter Lever hit Ewen Chatfield on the temple with a bouncer in 1975 and brought him unconscious to the ground, the Englishman burst into tears. Chatfield had swallowed his tongue, and it was only the quick thinking of English physiotherapist Bernard Thomas to clear his throat and give him a heart massage that saved Chatfield from becoming the first fatality on a Test ground.

There is fear at both ends of the pitch. Sean Abbott must have been ashen when he saw what had happened to Phillip Hughes at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Tuesday. When Lever visited Chatfield in hospital, Chatfield said, 'He looked worse than I did.'

But when near-death can be turned, in retrospect, into a good story, it affords a distraction and masks the seriousness of the consequences. Playing his hundredth Test match, Justin Langer was knocked out by a bouncer from Makhaya Ntini. The story of how Langer wanted to go out and bat in the second innings but was stopped by his captain Ricky Ponting – and of how Langer said the friendship was not as important as the Test match – added to the mythology of the game, but it also concealed the honour and good sense in Ponting's actions. Even in the time of helmets, a cricket ball is a lethal missile. Friendship was more important than the Test match.

When we think of Vivian Richards, what do we say about him batting without a helmet against Lillee and Thomson, Imran, Willis, Lawson and McDermott, not to mention a few slippery West Indians in domestic cricket? We marvel at the skill, the arrogance, the courage. We say little about the sheer stupidity. The great batsman got away with it, but the most eloquent statement about the example Richards set has been made by all those thousands of batsmen who have opted not to follow it.

A helmet, as we already knew, is no guarantee. Protective padding has improved. Guards of all kinds are worn. Pitches are flatter. The age of lightning-fast bowlers has gone. Retired cricketers in commentary booths turn fear into funny stories, so that you would never know how often they were shaking to their bones. For whole seasons, cricket seems safe and soft.

Words can do little to express the cricket community's concern and goodwill for Hughes. The rarity of serious injuries, and the desire of batsmen to mask their wounds and hide their fear, insulates us all from the fundamental fact that cricket is a dangerous game. Many disagree with compulsory helmets in junior cricket, arguing against the harmful effects of helmets on batting technique. Bad technique or a bad head injury? Little choice, really.

What speaks louder than words are the garden-variety bruises, the X-rays showing the bones that are cracked and chipped and crushed on a daily basis. Like success and failure on the scoreboard, escaping injury is, to an underappreciated degree, a matter of luck. The threat of harm is the price of sport, but it is a price that is not shared equally.

Reading the Knox piece I suddenly remember the dickhead on C4 (can't remember who it was) who banged his chest about 'batting with a headache' when somebody questioned the wisdom of Langer going out to bat. Or the other clots and tatt-flashers who called Steve Smith (the first one) gutless for not going out to face Joel Garner literally with one (broken) arm behind his back in 1984.

We can all admire Rick McCosker from the Centenary Test, but when we try and set him as a minimum standard, the ice is getting thin.

was it 'please don't yell', or 'Dawyne' something?

Awful few days ahead for his family and friends. I hope they (and we) are breathing a sigh of relief on Thursday or Friday.

Terrible terrible news.
It just goes to show that, despite all the precautions and safety gear available to batsmen,
it only takes one freak ball to cause this kind of havoc.
I wish Phil Hughes a rapid and a full recovery

Re-reading the Knox piece, and just in the interests of accuracy, wasn't Chatfield struck over the heart, rather than in the head?

taipan wrote:I heard this on the news on the way to work. How did it happen in this era of helmets?

It isn't good for a head to faceplant/fall 6 feet directly onto the ground and for the brain to consequently vibrate backwards and forwards in an enclosed space. Helmets don't much mitigate that sort of injury.

Jesus - awful news. Hope he recovers.

lardbucket wrote:

taipan wrote:I heard this on the news on the way to work. How did it happen in this era of helmets?

It isn't good for a head to faceplant/fall 6 feet directly onto the ground and for the brain to consequently vibrate backwards and forwards in an enclosed space. Helmets don't much mitigate that sort of injury.

I posted that before I had heard any details.

The Australian team doctor just spoke to the press. He said that Hughes is in intensive care in a critical condition. He will only provide updates if there is change. His family has requested privacy.

No lardy, according to wiki (yeah I know) he tried to eat a Lever bouncer, I think we know the rest....wasn't pdy a VoR incarnation, which pretty much rules him out as a suspect in this particular 'spot the moron' contest?

Congrats taips, your Brownie points are in the mail.

An ABC tweet understandably caused consternation.

"Cricket NSW could not confirm if Phil Hughes was alive when he left SCG.
ab.co/1xQddgn"