My highest cricket score is 63 not out. It happened one Sunday in June over twenty years ago when playing for Moore & Daresbury, the cricket team of the Cheshire village where I grew up.
Phil Hughes was 63 not out when he received the delivery from Scott Abbott that ended his life.
He was 37 runs away from a century, a landmark that in all likelihood would have propelled him into the starting eleven for Australia’s first Test against India next week.
He will remain 63 not out forever, an asterisk permanently next to his name in Wisden, an innings uncompleted.
When someone in the public eye dies young, the outpouring of emotion often seems out of all proportion.
“You’ve seen them on the TV a few times – you didn’t know them,” you think inwardly, awkwardly, aware that you are unlikely to win friends by voicing your thoughts out loud.
I know now that those tears are as much for ourselves as for them.
My highest score is likely to remain 63 not out forever.
Last season I barely scored a run for my cricket team. I’m 41 now. If I play next season the Tuesday availability email is likely to be sent to me on Thursday night. Or Friday morning. Or it will be a Saturday morning text.
Maybe there will be no text. Maybe the captain and the vice-captain will take pity on me, think it cruel to drag me out on a rare Saturday off, decide just to play with ten.
I thought back to that Sunday afternoon in June 1991 today.
I remembered how happy I was that night when I walked the mile home from Daresbury to Moore.
The lift in my heart when I saw two cars in the driveway, and realised I had both Mum and Dad to tell it all to, ball by ball, shot by shot.
There’s only one car in our driveway now.
The cricket ground has gone too, sold off as the team got older and no-one came to take our places.
And I shed a few tears. For Dad, and for growing older, and for my aching back and poor eyesight and my soon-to-be unused cricket bat.
And I shed a few more tears, in thanks that I was lucky enough to appreciate the joy of that walk home in June 1991 at the time, rather than through the sepia tinge of nostalgia.
I wondered if Phil Hughes had a moment of joy on Tuesday, when he acknowledged the applause of his team-mates after crashing Abbott for successive fours to reach his fifty.
Did he realise how close he was to that recall to the Australia Test team, that culmination of his teenage dreams?
And I shed a final tear, that maybe he didn’t.
– Nick Royle
