Not a shot you just get on with

I have been looking forward to coming back to Australia since the day I left the country in March 2012. Over those 78 days of cricket in that summer, I saw cricket being enjoyed like nowhere else. With humour, passion and ruthlessness. With hard cricket played on hard, sunburnt pitches. Australia is a tough terrain, and Aussies are tough people, befitting that tough terrain. A majority of Australians will agree they have felt what Paul Kelly has written in his song about the anticipation of the Boxing Day Test, "Behind The Bowler's Arm".

In the song, he gets on with it, and makes a promise he will always be ten rows back at the MCG, right behind the bowler's arm. That's what Aussies do. They get on with it. They got horrible decisions in the Kolkata Test in 2000-01, becoming part of a result that turned a cricket team's future around. They got on with it. Their legends start losing their powers, they get on with it and start working on new legends. At 30 for 3, if you block an over out, you'll hear someone from the crowd, with a beer too many down his system, shout, "Have a go, you mug. Get on with it."

No cricket people are as sure of themselves as the Aussies. Many a cricketing argument is settled by trying to imagine how the Aussies would have reacted to a situation. I saw the last time around, from how they got on with Ricky Ponting's retirement and the lack of a farewell match, from how they warmed to Virat Kohli, forgetting how he had flipped them the bird once he began to score runs, that they can strip emotion off and enjoy a game of cricket for what it is. They know what they want from their cricket, and they go about it unapologetically. If they don't get it, they get up, dust themselves off, and get on with it.

Not this week, though. Having come back to Australia, three days after Phillip Hughes' tragic death, I have not seen that certainty and clarity. Their cricketers, some of them who had shared dressing rooms with Hughes, a few who were on the pitch when he collapsed after being hit by the bouncer, don't know what to do with themselves. Sunday would have been Hughes' 26th birthday. David Warner wished him twice on Twitter, retweeted a few other wishes, and even took a screenshot of a horse race result from Singapore where a horse named Hughsy is placed second. "I think he is helping everyone. #63notout"

Michael Clarke has twice read out statements in tribute to Hughes, once on the behalf of the family and then on the behalf of the cricketing family. On both occasions he has failed to hold back tears. It is understood others in the team have conveyed to Cricket Australia that it is highly unlikely they will be ready to play a Test match in the same week as Hughes's funeral. These players don't deserve reminding at this unfortunate hour, but how silly it must seem to them now to ask opponents to get ready for a broken f***** elbow and pointing out scared eyes.

Yes, shit happens all the time, and it always will, but this is no ordinary shit. A cricketer expected to play this Test has died, aged 25, effectively on the pitch, from a blow that was routine, a kind of blow he would have shrugged off hundreds of times. How do you even start to come to terms with it? Only then can you get on with it.

My hosts in Wattle Grove don't know how to react to this, their neighbours and friends don't know how either, but they are all wondering what will happen to the Gabba Test. Sport all around Sydney has been affected. Radio - and you can tell Australian radio because it almost always talks sport - has been discussing the best way to honour Hughes, among which are renaming Paddington End at the SCG after Hughes, having an annual match between South Australia and New South Wales for the Phillip Hughes Trophy. ODI jersey number 64 has already been retired. Kids playing under-12 cricket are retiring on 26 as opposed to the norm, 30, to honour Hughes' 26 Test caps and 26 first-class hundreds. A-League soccer games have been breaking into long, unending applauses at 63 minutes, Hughes' score when he was hit.

Radio commentator Jim Maxwell, who broke down while reporting the news of Hughes' death on radio, is back to work, doing the Australian Open in Sydney, but the spirit of Hughes has followed. Not only did Warner drop in on Sunday, not only did they put out a bat at the ninth tee, which is the 63rd hole, with a golf ball on top of it, but also Jordan Spieth fired a course record 8-under 63 to win the title. "Up there taking the piss," New South Wales' keeper Daniel Smith tweeted.

The SCG was quiet on Sunday, with non-members not allowed inside, but at two different spots outside the ground people have been leaving their tributes. Flowers, bats, pads, balls, gloves, cards. Both birthday cards and condolence cards. Cards bought from stores, cards drawn at home. With messages written by adults, and with messages written by kids. Clearly a young hand, Mia says, "Plees, plees, plees don't be sad." "My bat can be replaced. You can't," says another message.

Before I boarded the flight to Australia, I knew this series was going to be tough for players, the fans and those covering it. As I sit by the Kippax Lake outside the SCG, it hits me just how tough it is going to be. The practical side of me says the sooner everyone takes this for what it was, a freak accident, the easier it will be for cricket to get back, for bowlers to bowl bouncers without anxiety, for batsmen to hook, and for the public to watch. Looking at the mood in Sydney, though, you know immediately this is no ordinary shot that you get on with.