Phillip Hughes: The depth of the loss, even a decade later, speaks to the cricketer he was | The Australian cricket team

TThat day, that week, that helpless, hopeless fortnight comes to you ten years later in a blur of images, the bowler holding Phillip Hughes' head in his arms, the teammate removing his pads, the orderly collection of cricket bats on verandas, the neurosurgeon's distant explanation, while mourners cool themselves in the high school gym.

It was a basal subarachnoid hemorrhage, a morbid fluke. We're largely used to such tragedies now, but every now and then they get to your marrow. A child is hit by a car that crashes into a playground. A family is blown to pieces by a rocket. A young girl is murdered and dumped in a tip. A cricketer is killed at the crease.

The people who mock the sport, and which sometimes deserves to be mocked, say our response to these tragedies is excessive, provincial and almost embarrassing. But even if we've never met them, athletes can still move us, repulse us, shock us, teach us. And if they die too young, we can mourn them.

Hughes' death certainly stirred audiences in a way never seen before. There was a restraint, a dignity, a decency that was at odds with the social media that encouraged it. It was a reminder that sport is ultimately a shared experience, and not all of these actions are created by sponsors, administrators or broadcasters.

And it was a reminder of something else: cricket, with its quirks, village traditions and rough-and-tumble democracy, is doing better than most sports. It is the realization that everyone, from the clumsiest suburban stroller to the sun fame and talent of Virat Kohli, plays the same game, respects the same history, is subject to the same laws and faces the same dangers. Cricketers, whether at Christmas lunch or at Lords, are keeping watch and assessing their options. Cricketers raise their bats, curse their luck and shadow caresses the shot they should have played. And cricketers always go home.

The fondness for memories and the depth of loss undoubtedly speak to the kind of cricketer Hughes was. For so long in Australia, cricket was about paying your dues, waiting in line and taking your chance. Hughes' career was almost the opposite of that. He burst into Test cricket in a blaze of light. We had grown up watching stumpy openers goofing around. But Hughes was different from them. He was so loose, so unorthodox, so completely undeterred by the great South African bowling line-up. He wore a black armband in honor of Victoria's bushfire victims and raised his first ton with consecutive sixes.

We all have our memories of him, but I vividly remember the first ball he faced against Pakistan in the Sydney Test a year later. Mohammad Sami shuffled in and Hughes tried to knock him into Kippax Lake. He conceded ten balls and didn't make a run, but I loved it all the more for it.

Anyone who has lost a loved one far too young is tormented by the same thoughts. What would they be like now? What would they look like? What kind of adult would they have become? They touch you in moments of joy and in the mundaneness of everyday life. You welcome a newborn, but there is an absence, a painful loss. You see a woman of the same age and the same hair color on the train. You pay and stare a little longer than necessary.

These questions also remain with athletes, especially on days like today. How would Hughes have adapted and improved his game? Would he have been a calming, sensible voice in the sandpaper test? How would he have handled Jasprit Bumrah this weekend? In his eulogy, Michael Clarke said he kept looking for him, kept expecting him to turn up, to saunter in, to lighten the mood. Every now and then, though increasingly rare, I see a cricketer who reminds me of Hughes. They are usually young, invariably from the countryside, usually before the rough edges have been taken out of their playing. Sometimes I listen to an AFL national draftee and hear Hughes' voice in that dry, boney, completely unaffected accent we heard at his funeral.

At the funeral, a single bat, a Kookaburra, stood leaning against a coffin. The pews were filled with prime ministers, Indian superstars and local pastoralists. To loved ones and to those who did not know him, the communion, the hymns, the tributes, the conga lines of bats around the world, it was all a comfort.

Time heals, they tell you. And to some extent they are right. But grief, Joan Didion wrote, comes in waves, attacks, sudden fears that weaken the knees, blind the eyes and erase the ordinariness of life. Exercise helps. Sports are sometimes a way to connect and distract and find meaning when the real things are too hard to talk about, too hard to bear. I once called it the great avoidance. In sports like cricket, comfort can be found in numbers, data and averages. But while Hughes' numbers provide some clarity, they offer no consolation. He was 63 and not out yet. It's been 10 years. He would have turned 36 on Saturday.

I once saw an interview with a football player whose daughter had died of a brain tumor. Did he feel cheated? the journalist asked. The football player, the father, was crushed by that question. Of course, he finally said. But she was the one who was deceived.

Those who loved Phillip Hughes talked about the things he would never do now: get his testing spot back, realize his talent, grow older, retire to raise Angus cattle. He was deprived of all that. It was a celebrated life and one that will never be forgotten. But it was still a life taken. I'll say it again: he would have turned 36 on Saturday. Nothing we do as fans and nothing we write as journalists can quite offset its crushing desolation.