A year on: Phillip Hughes almost withdrew with illness from tragic match, biography reveals

Hughes died three days short of his 26th birthday of a brain hemorrhage on November 27, last year.

New Delhi: In a startling revelation, Greg Hughes, father of former Australian cricketer Phillip, has revealed that his son almost withdrew from the game in which he suffered the fatal injury.

In a new book, Phillip Hughes the Official Biography, Hughes reveals that his son woke up with a virus and felt so bad that he almost pulled out of the domestic four-day match between South Australia and New South Wales at the Sydney Cricket Ground last November where he was felled by a bouncer.

“He wasn’t well,” Greg says in the biography. “But he was so determined to score runs. He’d thought he’d batted himself out of the Test team when he didn’t make runs in the previous match, but now it was clear that Clarkey was struggling with his hamstring, Phillip knew how important this match was, and he saw that bigger picture.”

David Warner, the current Australian opener, was in the field for NSW that day and spoke of his former team-mate's determination to push through the illness.

“He was making a statement,” Warner is quoted as saying in the book. “He was going to go big. He was sick the night before, he was sick that morning, but he had to play because there was a Test match around the corner.”

"Phillip Hughes: The Official Biography", by Peter Lalor and Malcolm Knox, traces the extraordinary life of the boy from Macksville, who died while playing the game he love.

Hughes, who played 26 Tests for Australia, died three days short of his 26th birthday of a brain hemorrhage on November 27, last year; two days after he was struck under the rear of his batting helmet by a short-pitch ball while playing for South Australia at the SCG.

According to reports, the authors of the biography had conducted almost 100 interviews with family, friends, those who played with and against him when Hughes was young and those who witnessed his rise to Test cricket.

The first anniversary of his death will be marked by the Australia and New Zealand teams on the first day of the third Test here in Adelaide.