It matters how you live, not how you die

www.GOcricket.com - http://www.gocricket.com/It-matters-how-you-live-not-how-you-die/Telford-Vice/columnshow/45356346.cms

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

THAT Chris Gayle has been ruled out of West Indies’ impending Test series in South Africa with a back injury removes any question that the visitors will be competitive. They will not. But we are relieved that they have, in fact, arrived. Let us hope they are not too tempted to avoid embarrassment on the field by rustling up a pay dispute and hightailing it home.

That Robin Peterson has been recalled to bowl to a West Indies team sans a certain broadswording left-hander will tug memories back to a sunstruck afternoon at the Wanderers in December, 2003 when another broadswording left-hander - albeit one 15 centimetres shorter, 10 years older, and a lot more stylish in every sense - took 28 runs off one of his overs.

That Brian Lara’s crime against bowling that day is still a Test record does not sit easily with South Africans. But at least Peterson now shares the ignominy with James Anderson, who was also mauled for 28 runs in an over - by George Bailey at the WACA last December.

That Herschelle Gibbs was arrested in Cape Town on Sunday and has been charged with driving drunk will raise no eyebrows. It has happened before and the only surprise will be if it does not happen again. Those whom the gods wish to reduce to ridiculousness, they first endow with too much talent.

There. Now that the week’s cricket news from South Africa has been dealt with, we can get back to what the rest of the game is talking about: a man who never grew old and a cricketer who never had the chance to be great.

More words have surely been spoken and written about Phil Hughes in death than were spent on him while he was alive. Before last Tuesday, he was neither first nor last among his equals. Two days later, he was a rare talent gone too soon in eulogies that started from on high and continued all the way down.

“For a young life to be cut short playing our national game seems a shocking aberration,” Australian prime minister Tony Abbott said.

“Will love you forever,” Michael Clarke tweeted on Sunday to mark what would have been Hughes’ 26th birthday.

A few days short of 26 years is too short a life by any human measure. But was Hughes really the scion of his generation of Australian batsmen to the overarching level he has been made out to be? Perhaps he would have grown into those boots, but after 26 Tests, 25 one-day internationals and a single T20 international, there is no way that argument can be made rationally.

Rationality, however, is not what dealing with death is about. Emotion and loss and uncertainty are. The uncertainty is what disturbs us most. We will never know how good Hughes could have been, as a cricketer and as a man. But we will also never know how he might have struggled, both in cricket and in life. What we do know is that, one day, we, too, will be cold and gone. And we are terrified that, like Hughes, we will not have done everything we wanted to do. But, for Hughes and for us, things could have been worse ...

“Absent dead,” is what some scorecards recorded next to the name of Abdul Aziz in the second innings of the Quaid-e-Azam final between Karachi and Combined Services in January, 1959. Aziz was batting in the first innings when an apparently innocuous off-break leapt from the matting surface and hit him in the chest. Before the next ball was bowled, he collapsed into unconsciousness and died on his way to hospital.

A week earlier, in the semi-final against Bahawalpar, Aziz was not out on nine when his captain, Wazir Mohammad, declared Karachi’s innings closed. And well he might have. His team had dismissed their opponents for 185 and their reply had grown to 772/7.

Because of an error on the scoreboard, the senior man at the crease - not Aziz - had thought he needed to hit one of the day’s two remaining balls for four to reach a special milestone before stumps and so enable the skipper to unleash his bowlers fresh the nest morning.

He played the ball to point, where a misfield made him call Aziz back for a second run ...

Hanif Mohammad was run out for 499, prompting the declaration. The scoreboard had had him on 496 instead of 498 when the fateful delivery was bowled. Had he known his true score, he would never have taken the risk of chasing a second.

Dare we imagine Aziz’ excitement at being at the centre of such drama? Here, bloody hell, was something to tell his grandchildren! It must still have thumped in his breast a week later when that damned ball struck him dead. He was 18 years old.

Live whatever life you have been given. Regardless of whether you are Chris Gayle or Robin Peterson or Brian Lara or Herschelle Gibbs or one of us, that is why you are here. Anything less and you do the human race a disservice.

We do not know when death will come, but we know that it will.