Stuart Broad returns to work on Tuesday morning but he is still consumed by thoughts and memories of Phillip Hughes. “I’ve struggled quite a bit with it,” the England opening bowler says as he describes his reaction to the death last week of Hughes, the Australia batsman who was his Ashes rival and his admired contemporary in the often brutal arena of Test cricket. Broad is about to begin a two-week training camp for England’s fast bowlers in South Africa but his mind is locked on the terrible fate of Hughes who was struck by a ball while batting.
The moving tributes from around the world will continue with Hughes’s funeral on Wednesday. His family and friends are lost in grief but shock and sadness has enveloped cricket wherever it is played. It feels especially sobering to talk about Hughes with Broad, a bouncer-wielding bowler whose task has always been to unsettle and even intimidate aggressive batsmen such as the young Australian.
Broad knows what it means, when batting, to have his helmet crumpled, his nose badly broken and to watch blood pour from his face. The injury he suffered during the summer against India, when a ball smashed into him and got caught behind the grill of his helmet, seemed savage at the time. Now Broad appears fortunate and he does not attempt to conceal his raw feelings.
“I’ve been thinking about Phil such a lot. I know everyone in cricket is the same. It’s hard to come to terms with it because when you walk out to bat you never dream someone could pass away. You know people get injured but … it’s been really hard.”
Broad and Hughes were opponents rather than friends, which is how it had to be in modern cricket. For the most part they were joined in a fierce battle. “I played five or six Tests against Phil and had a couple of beers with him,” Broad remembers. “He was a quiet but cheeky chappie.”
Broad pauses as he gazes across Trent Bridge on a cold, quiet winter morning. “I remember his 81 [not out in the first Ashes Test in July 2013] here…”
Hughes and Ashton Agar, a 19-year-old debutant, set a Test record with a last-wicket partnership of 163 – which ended only when the teenager was caught off Broad’s bowling for 98. England won a memorable Test by 14 runs. “Trent Bridge tweeted a photo of Phil walking out here for the anthems and Jimmy [Anderson] and I were beside him,” Broad says. “It was quite emotional to see that this morning.”
How did he hear of the fate of Hughes? “Both times my mum texted me,” the 28-year-old says. “She texted me when he had been hit – saying ‘Awful news about Phil Hughes.’ I quickly found out what happened on my phone. Two days later I woke up again to a text from her, saying, ‘I can’t believe it.’ She was in tears. It’s been a very emotional few days but the support shown right around the world has been special. The tributes of the bats with the caps really got me. I have a friend who knows nothing about cricket and he said he had a tear in his eye looking through them. He said how fitting and emotional it is.”
Broad knows how many people have been torn apart. “My thoughts go to Phil’s family – but also to the guys who were on the field when he got hit. David Warner [who accompanied Hughes to hospital in an ambulance], Brad Haddin – good friends. I remember Phil coming on the scene in South Africa in 2009 and [in his second Test] getting two hundreds in Durban. He was a future superstar of Australian cricket. So it’s heartbreaking it’s been taken away from him. There are just no positives you can take from it.”
The bowler still wants to find something more hopeful to say about a 25-year-old who was on 63 not out when his life was obliterated: “I’ve wondered if any time an Australia player gets to 63 the crowd should clap for a minute but it’s obviously not for me to say …”
Broad is also deeply moved by the plight of the promising 22-year-old who bowled the ball which struck Hughes. “My heart goes out to Sean Abbott,” he says. “There’s nothing he could have done and so he should not feel any guilt. Everyone knows he didn’t mean it because a bouncer is part of every bowler’s armoury. I still think Sean has got a bright future. He played one-day cricket for Australia and he needs to know everyone in the game is thinking of him. It could have happened to any bowler in the world.”
Has Broad ever worried he might have caused real damage to a batsman? “I hit Chris Rogers in the Melbourne Test last December. I hit him on the side [of the head] and he went down and immediately the physio was on. He had split his face and I saw the helmet after the game and it was completely crushed. So helmets do a good job because so many people get hit on the head. When you see a batsman go down your feelings change instantly from aggression to concern.”
Mike Selvey, a former England fast bowler, wrote in these pages last week of a recent practice technique. England’s bowlers sometimes put a helmet on a tall pole in the nets. In an attempt to perfect a delivery that might induce a batsman to top-edge a pull shot, the bowlers aim for the badge on the helmet. “I’ve not practised that personally,” Broad says, “but for me a bouncer is one of my strengths. So in the nets I practise yorkers and slower balls much more. I can’t see the style of cricket changing particularly but we will all take a long time to get over it because the loss is so devastating.”
Broad knows what it feels like to be hit as a Test batsman. When I ask him about his nose being broken in two places against India at Old Trafford in August he takes out his phone and finds the YouTube footage. Taking on Varun Aaron’s bouncer, the ball ricochets into Broad’s face, penetrating the steel bars at speed, breaking bones and causing gruesome swelling and two black eyes. The commentators’ voices echo eerily around a deserted pavilion as they struggle to fathom what happened.
“I was on 14 off six balls,” Broad says, “and I’d just hit two sixes. I went for the pull.” The incident happens so fast that Broad says: “Wait for the replay.”
As we watch him being hit again, the commentators begin to understand. “It’s lodged in the helmet, oh dear,” a voice cries. “How often do you see that? I hope he’s not hurt.”
Nasser Hussain, commentating for Sky, suddenly realises the truth: “But he is hurt – they’re calling for the physio immediately. And it’s great to see the India players going up to Stuart Broad. I’m sure there will be some blood in there.”
Broad, who stresses that the India players showed real compassion, says, “They were trying to make sure I was coherent.”
He points at the England physio running out on the field. “He’d been eating a curry,” Broad says with a laugh. “He had right curry breath when he got to me. See the blood pouring from my nose? It was broken in both places.”
Hussain’s voice breaks through again. “Ouch, ouch, ouch … no one wants to see this.”
Broad shuts down his phone and says, “It hit me flush.” We both realise again how unlucky Hughes was to have been struck on the back of his unprotected neck.
I ask Broad how he felt when facing Mitchell Johnson a year ago. There must have been a prickle of fear sometimes? “It certainly gives you an adrenaline rush. Mitchell’s was the fastest bowling I’d ever faced – and hostile at 94mph. He was getting the batsmen out so quickly the lower order were facing Johnson after he’d bowled just six overs. So he was fresh. It was a challenge.”
Broad grins ruefully, one fast bowler paying tribute to another. “I remember facing him at Brisbane where I got 30 odd and the first few balls whistled past my head and I thought: ‘I’ve not even seen that.’ That’s a real test but it’s why you play the game. Obviously I will have to face Johnson again and try to score runs off him but in years to come I’ll be able to look back and think I faced such hostile bowling.”
There is almost relish in Broad’s voice and it seems true to the memory of Hughes, who was such an aggressive and bold batsman, that we should finally look ahead. Broad hesitates but Hughes looked like the kind of man who would have wanted cricket to continue in its purest form. He might have been a very modern batsman but Hughes was determined to make a sustained impact in Test cricket.
I think he would have acknowledged the feat of Broad and Anderson in passing 500 Test wickets as an opening partnership. That achievement means they are third on the list of all-time wicket-takers as an opening pair – behind Pakistan’s masterly duo of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis and West Indies’ irreducibly great Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh.
Broad shakes his head. “To think we’re ahead of [Allan] Donald and [Shaun] Pollock,” he says, incredulously. “It’s a real honour. We’re a long way behind Wasim and Waqar [who took 559 wickets together, while Ambrose and Walsh reached the peerless mark of 762]. But Jimmy and I are planning to play for a few more years so you never know. We work so closely together, we’re good friends and we talk about our bowling a lot. It’s special.”
Early on Tuesday Broad and Anderson are due to land in Johannesburg and then make the 75-mile drive to Potchefstroom to join their fellow fast bowlers Liam Plunkett, Jack Brooks, Mark Footitt, Boyd Rankin and Matt Dunn.
They will be a sober group of English quicks but they will also work hard in the searing heat and altitude. Broad is returning from knee surgery and has bowled only 20 overs of low intensity in the indoor nets. The next fortnight will see the start of an exacting year ahead.
“We go to Australia for a Tri-series on 6 January,” Broad says, “and we stay on for the [50-over] World Cup. If we get to the final we go straight to the Caribbean for three Tests. We’re back on 9 May and the New Zealand series over here starts on the 20th. Then it’s the Ashes with one-day games in between. We’re in Dubai from 20 September until 1 December. And we then go to South Africa on 9 December. So we’re away for 321 nights next year.”
In ordinary times such a harsh schedule would induce a groan but Broad, remembering Hughes, his fallen cricketing comrade, makes a simple point. “We know how lucky we are. There are a lot of exciting games ahead – and it’s important we make the very most of each one of them.”
