Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with great sadness that I rise to speak in this condolence debate and add my words to the other members of parliament who have spoken so eloquently.

In the week that Phillip Hughes, tragically, passed away there were many other tragedies around the country. We had the death of truck drivers, we had youth suicides, we had deaths by industrial accident, we had fatal car crashes and we had people die unexpectedly of heart attacks and strokes. All and each of those were a tragedy in their own right and a tragedy for their family, friends and loved ones. But the death of Phillip Hughes has struck a chord in the nation that I do not think I have ever seen before. We have seen such an outpouring of grief.

The PutOutYourBats campaign saw perhaps 100,000 Australians around the country actually putting a cricket bat out at the front of their house. We saw a cricket bat stuck up outside Kirribilli House. On Sunday night when I came into parliament to drop my things off, the member for Barker, whose office is a few doors up from mine, had his bat there. I brought my own in and, with the member for Barker, we put those bats down in front of the House of Representatives chamber as a small tribute.

I ask the question: why has there been such an outpouring of grief over Phillip Hughes' deaths? I think there are a couple of reasons. Firstly, it is because of what cricket actually means to our nation. There is something about the game of cricket that gets into our blood as Australians and as young people. Maybe it is the nobility of the game, but there is something special that the game has. It is something that we can talk about amongst friends and colleagues. And, of course, there is the traditional Christmas Day-Boxing Day test match. There is just something about the game that is unique to Australia.

Secondly, I think the reason it struck so many people is that we were all once Phillip Hughes. We were all once those kids from the country or kids from suburban parts of our cities playing backyard cricket with dreams of one day wearing the baggy green and trying to replicate our idols. When we will bowling, we were Dennis Lillee; when we were batting, we were Ian Chappell. We were all once those kids play in our backyards. We all played backyard cricket, where we developed the rules to our backyard game like English law—in the way that the English common law has been developed, we debated what constitutes a four, what was a six or, if you hit a particular house, how much that was.

As we read through the tributes to Phillip Hughes this is exactly what he did with his family. In fact, his history said that Phillip Hughes was known for his strength through the offside through those slashing square cuts and those slashing cover drives. It said that those actually came about because where he played in his family home on the leg side is actually because of where his family home was. He was frightened to hit a shot to the leg side too hard as it would hit his mother's kitchen window and perhaps he would be in trouble—and so therefore he became an offside player!

Perhaps the other reason that this has caused such an outpouring of grief is because of what Phillip Hughes actually achieved in his too-short career. I will just go through some of the records. At age 17, while still in high school, he made a century on debut in Sydney grade cricket. At age 18 he became one of the youngest players ever to debut for New South Wales. In that year he averaged 62 and he became the youngest player ever to score a century in a Sheffield Shield final. At the age of 20 he was selected to open the batting for Australia against South Africa. We can all remember that most ugly four-ball test duck that he faced when he was taking on the might of the South African pace attack of Dale Steyn and Morkel at the time. But in his second test he became the youngest cricketer ever to score a century in both innings. He was the first Australian batsmen to score a one-day century on debut and was the first Australian batsman to score 202 in a recent one-day match up in Darwin.

It is well known that many Australian batsmen have all sorts of trouble playing in English conditions. Phillip Hughes first went to England to play for Middlesex and he scored three centuries in his first three innings.

But perhaps his greatest performance was his Sheffield Shield game playing for New South Wales against Tasmania at Bellerive Oval. Often the true indication of a genius or someone with great skills is how they perform compared to everyone else. For many years a record was held by Don Bradman from the 1939-1940 season when he scored the greatest percentage of runs in a Sheffield Shield game. Phillip Hughes broke that record in the 2008-2009 season when in one match he scored 58 per cent of New South Wales runs. If you have a look through the scorecard, it is truly amazing to see how talented he was. On a green wicket at Bellerive Oval down in Hobart, New South Wales batted first and scored 172. Phil Hughes scored 93 of those 172 runs. At the end of the day's play, after Tasmania had gone into bat, 17 wickets had fallen with an hour to go; Tasmania was seven for 41. So 17 wickets had fallen for only 213 runs, and Phillip Hughes had scored 93 of those runs. That in itself would be a truly remarkable effort, but, after Tasmania were finally rolled for 127, in the second innings Phil Hughes repeated the same thing. Out of a total of 173 for New South Wales, Phillip Hughes scored 108 runs. That performance was the highest percentage of runs ever scored by an Australian batsman in a Sheffield Shield game.

The other reason there has been such an outpouring of grief is for what Phillip Hughes could have achieved. He died, was taken away from us all, at the age of just 25. If you look at some of our greatest test players, many of them did not achieve their best efforts until they were 26, 27, 28 or into their early 30s. Look at a player like Adam Gilchrist, who did not get selected for Australia until he was almost 27 years of age. But I think there has been such an outpouring because Phillip Hughes's death reminds us of the fragility of life—that, for any of us, our lives can be taken away in a split second. Rather than going along with the sometimes petty gossiping and bickering, and worrying about petty issues, we should live life as Phillip Hughes batted and seize the day: make every day count.

Cricket is a game of numbers and statistics. Every child knows that Don Bradman's average was 99.94. I think for many years or forever, as long as cricket is played, the number 63 will be remembered as the score that Phillip Hughes was not out on. Finally I would like to add a message to Sean Abbott. Mate, the best thing that Phillip Hughes would want you to do is to charge in off your long run, bend your back and dig the ball in. Vale, Phillip Hughes.

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