‘How I helped make Phil Hughes the new Hayden’
Four years ago, the coach of Australia’s new wonderboy opener formulated a bold plan: Phil Hughes would aim to replace Matthew Hayden in the national side. But even he can’t believe it has actually happened.
Hayden’s retirement at the end of the Australian Test summer, following his omission from the one-day squad, opened the door for Hughes to make his Test debut at age 20 on the tour of South Africa. Since debuting Hughes has thrived, and already has two centuries to his name.
His elevation to the national side was mapped out by his coach, Neil D’Costa, when Hughes joined his academy back in 2004. “We wrote a plan for him to take over from Matt Hayden,” D’Costa tells SPIN from Sydney. “His Dad keeps recounting that four years ago I said to Phil that unless you’re here to replace Hayden, I don’t want you to come to my academy.”
D’Costa set run scoring goals for Hughes to reach for each year, with a goal of making first grade, then the New South Wales side and eventually Australia. “It’s just unbelievable that it has worked out exactly like that and you’ve just got to pinch yourself.”
Hughes’ batting technique has attracted plenty of comment in his brief international career thus far, with AB de Villiers noting he “runs away from the ball” and Mickey Arthur suggesting a weakness against the short ball. Both comments were made prior to Hughes’ back-to-back centuries in Durban.
“He’s a bit of a new age player,” D’Costa says. “He moves around the crease a lot and has a great instinct to hit the ball to open areas. A lot of people use the word that he’s unconventional but my biomechanics background makes me look at everything a little bit closer and I don’t see him doing anything too differently.”
His technique is clearly working for him. Hughes reached 1000 first class runs aged 20 years and four days – 147 days quicker than Bradman – and was, fittingly, named the Bradman Young Cricketer of the Year at the 2009 Allan Border Medal.
But the greatest prize came in Johannesburg, when Hughes was handed his baggy green cap. Was D’Costa nervous, watching his pupil’s first Test innings? “Yeah, I was – but I only got to get nervous for four balls, so it was alright,” he says. He redeemed himself from a first innings duck with an impressive 75 – the top score of the innings – in the second dig.
“He was only 25 runs off a century on debut against a hostile attack in a tough innings: he can adjust to conditions, and if that takes jumping around and swaying out of the way, that’s what he’ll do,” D’Costa says.
Just like D’Costa’s other star pupil, Australian vice-captain Michael Clarke, Hughes has shunned the riches of the Indian Premier League. Instead, Hughes has elected to spend the first part of the Australian winter playing for Middlesex – his first taste of English conditions.
“I think his time at Middlesex will be very important. He’s study the conditions and develop his art. Instead of going to the IPL he chose to go there, and that says a lot about his 20-year-old state of mind. He said I’ve got to do what’s right for my career, not what’s right for my bank balance,” he says.
Judging by Hughes’ performances in South Africa, D’Costa may have two pupils in the Australian side for a long while yet.
For more on Phil Hughes, including the story of his signing for Middlesex, see the April issue of SPIN magazine, out now.
