That day, that week, that helpless, hopeless fortnight comes at you 10 years later in a blur of images – the bowler cradling Phillip Hughes’s head, the teammate removing his pads, the orderly assembly of cricket bats on front porches, the detached explanation of the neurosurgeon, the mourners fanning themselves in the high school gymnasium.
It was a basal subarachnoid haemorrhage – a sick fluke. We’re largely inured to such tragedies now but occasionally they get in your marrow. A child is struck by a car crashing into a playground. A family is blown to bits by a missile. A young girl is murdered and dumped in a tip. A cricketer is killed at the crease.
