Notes from the Pavilion – the week in Australian cricket

Farewell Phillip

It was as tough a day as any that Australian cricket has endured but yesterday Phillip Hughes was farewelled in fitting style in his hometown of Macksville, New South Wales. There’s still an unreality about this tragedy and nothing said that more indelibly than watching what a struggle yesterday’s service was for Hughes’ family, friends and teammates.

I wouldn’t want to speak on behalf of anyone else, but there were times during the Nine broadcast where I almost felt like an intruder when cameras panned across all of those sad eyes. It’ll be hard to forget the sight of Australian captain Michael Clarke speaking animatedly and with a huge grin to two young boys with Hughes’ Test cap number, 408, on the backs of their shirts. Not too long ago it was Hughes standing in their position in the school gymnasium.

Across at the SCG, 63 bats, each inscribed with tales of Hughes’ action-packed but all-too-brief career symbolically dotted the ground on which he played his final innings. Mourners gathered there, at the Adelaide Oval, the WACA and all around Australia. They brought bats, they brought flowers and they united in what has become a week of public mourning for an admired young man.

We learned of wonderful and unknown anecdotes, like Hughes chopping down his Cricket Australia tracksuit pants for the children of his friend Corey Ireland, about his post-career dreams to breed Angus Stud cattle, and about the regular calls Hughes made home requesting updated photos of his beloved cows.

This week the written tributes too, have been simply overwhelming. On Hughes’ birthday, Clarke spoke of his loyalty, generous heart and work ethic. “I don’t have a blood brother,” said the Australian captain, “but I am very proud to have called Phillip my brother. I am a better man for having known him.” Justin Langer’s ode to his former batting pupil was equally heartbreaking. “As a coach,” Langer said, “I often speak about the “Phil Hughes gene”. When queried, I say I want players who can score runs and get the job done, just like Phil Hughes does.” Middlesex’s Angus Fraser remembered the county’s former pro with poignancy and affection.

Needless to say, yesterday’s service contained a number of stirring eulogies, further underlining the loss of both the Hughes family and Australian cricket, whose players now face the monumental task of carrying on without him. Perhaps putting it most memorably, Clarke spoke of his much-loved friend as a man whose spirit would live on with his teammates. “We must play on,” he concluded. “So rest in peace little brother. I’ll see you out in the middle.”

Amen to that.

To play or not to play

Over the coming days, a number of players have desperately tough calls to make on whether they’re physically and emotionally capable of taking the field to kick off the summer of Test cricket.

Ryan Harris probably spoke for many when he said: “Let’s just get past [Hughes’ funeral] first. It’s going to be pretty bloody hard.” Australia’s players will head into their pre-Test camp on Thursday, less than 24 hours after the funeral. Cricket Australia boss James Sutherland said that any player who doesn’t feel right to play will be supported in his decision.

At state level too, players are noticeably struggling. Queensland’s Peter George was so affected that he felt compelled to warn an opposition batsman in his grade cricket game for Wynnum-Manly that he’d start with a cathartic bouncer. “I thought the sooner I could get a bouncer out of the way — and get back on the horse — the sooner that cricket would feel a bit more like normal,” George told The Courier-Mail.

George’s Queensland teammate Chris Lynn, on the other hand, told net bowlers at a training session on Monday to fire down bouncers so he could immediately confront the situation. “For both parties, batsmen and bowlers, we can’t be fearful of what’s happened. The longer the situation drags out, the worse it is for everybody,” he said. “Some people are going to be tentative, but I wanted to hit the nail on the head at training and get it off my chest.”

The truth is, each and every player presents a different case and knowing what a wrench it was to even watch Hughes’ memorial service from afar, one can only imagine how tough it will be in the coming days for his close friends to get themselves in a headspace to play a game of Test cricket. They too deserve the sympathy and compassion of the cricket community.

New dates for the summer of international cricket

Cricket Australia really must be commended for the respectful and dignified manner in which they have handled every aspect of this traumatic episode. As leaders of the sport in this country, both Clarke and Sutherland have displayed a towering strength. It would be understandable for cricket to be the last thing on their minds right now, but CA, the BCCI and broadcasters have worked quickly and admirably to re-plan and reschedule a busy summer of cricket between Australia and India.

The first Test will now take place in Adelaide between the 9-13 December, the second at Brisbane between the 17-21 December, the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne remains unchanged and the fourth Test in Sydney has been moved back and will fall between the 6-10 January. The one-day internationals that follow remain the same bar the switch of the MCG game on 16 January to the 18th, and the SCG game on the 18th to the 16th.

Victorian cricket might finally have a new home

It seems absurd to even consider other cricket news stories as being all that important this week, but there was at least one that lifted spirits a little on account of being about new beginnings. In its search for a new home at the Junction Oval in St Kilda, Victorian cricket has been in seemingly eternal limbo.

This week though, with the election of the Andrews state government, Cricket Victoria finally received confirmation that the ALP would honour their $35m pledge to the project.

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The Victorian Cricket & Community Centre project will not only house high-performance training facilities for the state’s elite cricketers, but also provide Melbourne with a second first-class venue (the Bushrangers last played Sheffield Shield games there in 2005-06) on which Victoria can play their late-season fixtures.

Under the ALP-backed plan, the facility will also double-up as the new home of Cricket Victoria’s administration and heritage restoration works will be done on the beautiful Blackie-Ironmonger stand.

Once finished in early 2017, the redeveloped boutique ground would seat 7000 patrons. Doubtless this comes as good news to the AFL and the MCC too, who’ll now have the MCG to themselves to start the football season.

Speaking of the AFL, the St Kilda football club thinks it could get in on the action too, though that remains to be seen, especially given the fact that they didn’t feature in the ALP vision for the site. The Saints played their home games at the Junction Oval’s main ground until 1964 and under a Napthine government, would have been co-tenants of sorts at neighbouring Ian Johnson Oval. Now they might be out in the cold. In the meantime, Melbourne cricket fans can get down to the ground on 13 February for the World Cup warm-up match between Afghanistan and UAE. Entry is free.

Weekend Warriors

When we first started this blog, we resolved that it would be a good idea to regularly shine a light on the large, passionately run but scarcely celebrated club cricket scene throughout Australia. For generations these clubs and associations have been pillars of community life, offering a meeting place in which Australians of all shapes, sizes and creeds share in this wonderful game.

These clubs are the nurseries from which cricketers like Phillip Hughes emerge and importantly, they’re also the place where children learn to love the game regardless of their ability. Over the past week those clubs all linked arms in heartening style to pay tribute and celebrate the life of Phillip Hughes, a young man who once played amongst on the fields of Macksville and its surrounds.

In some leagues last weekend, junior players retired not on 50 as usual but 63, Hughes’ last first-class score. Some stopped for a minute’s silence after the 63rd over. In Melbourne, Noble Park and Caulfield halted their game after 63 overs and at 4:08pm, the latter in honour of Hughes’ Test cap number. Club cricketers around the country wore black armbands and many sent their own unique messages to Hughes. They put their bats out, they paid their respects to a fellow cricketer and united not just in grief, but in a heart-warming display of togetherness.

I guess what all of this tells us, as heartbreaking a week as it’s been, is that cricket is deeply embedded in the Australian psyche and moves many of us so deeply. Not all, but most of us played cricket as children either in backyards, parks, school grounds or at local clubs. What the “put out your bats” movement showed was not just a love and support for Phillip Hughes, but that cricket affects so many Australians deeply.

This week I found myself talking to total strangers about cricket, about their backyard battles and about what it was like when they were a kid with dreams. It hit me that not only did so many Australians have a bat to put out, but so many of them were deeply attached to them and felt compelled to share the stories and memories that it held for them. If only Phillip Hughes knew how he’d brought us all together.

It’s easy in these times to become cynical to the ways of modern sports marketing or even believe the doomsday prophets who tell us that cricket will eventually die, but it was impossible to ignore the dormant feeling for the game that this event has been awakened in so many. I saw a bat at the supermarket counter, I saw one outside a butchers shop and I saw them on porches all around my neighbourhood.

Phillip Hughes’ death has been a traumatic experience for cricket and leaves a hole that we’ll never quite fill, but around us now there is also hope. Perhaps those of us who’ve drifted away from grassroots cricket have received a salient reminder; maybe this summer it’s finally time to take our nephews, nieces, sons and daughters down to the park for that game. Maybe it’s time to stop making excuses to put off that hit in the nets with old mates. Maybe it’s time to finally seek out that club down the road and pull on the whites again.

You can only hope that Australian cricket will never again be put through a week as sad as this one, but it has also reminded us of the abiding joy of this special game.

If you have a grassroots cricket story to share, send it through to russell.jackson@theguardian.com