A precocious player with talent to burn
Phillip Hughes was the owner of the most unorthodox technique in elite ranks, combining uncanny ability to create inconceivable strokes with an unquenchable blue-collar work ethic.
Hughes was the product of a Macksville banana plantation and was rarely happier than when he was talking about his dreams to run a cattle farm once his cricket days were over.
There appeared little in his background to explain a technique that allowed him to lace bullets through point from the best pacemen in world cricket, yet appear as awkward as any novice on his bad days.
He had plenty in a career of highs and lows that resulted in 26 Tests and five international centuries spread over five years before he was cut down on the verge of yet another Test comeback.
His career brought 1535 Test runs at the average of 32.65, while his 826 one-day international runs came at a slightly higher return.
Yet he was the first Australian man to score a 50-over double century and produced career-high scores in red and white ball formats in recent months.
It was sometimes easy to forget that Hughes was only 25 but his host of precocious performances spoke of a player for whom batting came naturally even if his style was intensely rustic and homemade.
He lasted four balls in his first Test innings but showed plenty of glimpses of his class with 75 in the second innings against the might of South Africa's pace attack at Johannesburg in early 2009.
Hughes was 20 at the time and a week later would become the youngest batsman to score centuries in each innings of a Test when he hit 115 and 160 in Durban.
He then went to England to hone his cricket schooling and made an immediate impact at Middlesex, where he scored centuries in each of his three county matches.
A year earlier he had become the first teenager to score a century in a Sheffield Shield final.
The number 26 was the most critical in his cricket profile.
Hughes played 26 Tests and hit 26 first-class centuries. And he would have turned 26 on Sunday.
Only Don Bradman, Greg Chappell and Ricky Ponting - conceivably Australia's three greatest batsmen - hit more centuries at a younger age. Yet Hughes had been dropped five times during that 26-Test run and had been forced to make and remake his career over nearly a decade spent mostly sparking heated public debates.
A first Ashes tour came in 2009, where Hughes would soon lose his way amid a team without direction.
His search for clarity and consistency took him to Adelaide in 2012, where he joined South Australia and continued his trait of scoring many runs.
He went on another Ashes tour last year, briefly owning a share of the Test 10th wicket partnership record with Ashes debutant and WA spinner Ashton Agar.
The most idiosyncratic and polarising batsman of his generation, Hughes was equipped nonetheless with enough steely self-belief to resist the constant barbs.
