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BBC's Jonathon Agnew wrong and hypocritical to invoke the memory of Phil Hughes

By Adam Henry - posted Tuesday, 20 January 2015


In his long first class career Agnew would no doubt have been awarded some wickets from bad umpiring decisions. I am sure there were times that Boycott was given out in a match when he actually wasn't, but with one hundred first class centuries and over 8,000 runs for England he more than made up for whatever setbacks he encountered and made the most of the life opportunities he experienced because of his success as a cricketer. That is in the end why someone like Boycott loved or loathed will always be famous for playing international cricket, while Agnew, will always be known as someone writing about what others have done playing international cricket.

Bringing Hughes' death into his rather weak argument against the Australians (and it was only the Australians he singled out), was crass and opportunistic of Agnew. Certainly, if he wishes to talk about bad behavior and sledging, fine, be specific, name the actual players all over the world, do not generalize. The death of Hughes has nothing at all to do with what people do or say on a cricket field, or anywhere else, nor does it obligate anyone connected to Hughes to behave as Agnew believes they should. Agnew is not only being a hypocrite, but is being deeply disrespectful to the Hughes' family, his many friends in the Australian cricket team and around the world still mourning his untimely death.

Agnew's view is an absolutist and utopian view based on highly selective and unrealistic cultural biases. Worst of all, he has quite egregiously linked (intentionally or not) the freakish accident of Hughes' death after being struck by a bouncer to some particularly Australian brand of unnecessarily aggressive cricket.

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This is a travesty.

There was no malice behind that ball, no aggressive sledging or chest beating immediately prior to it, young Sean Abbott has probably sent down thousands of bouncers in his cricketing life, the shot Hughes's missed he had probably played thousands of times and watched it go for four after smashing it, he was well set and headed toward yet another century. The ball hit him in the most extraordinarily unlucky spot even though he was wearing the full protective kit.

Sean was a former New South Wales team mate and a friend of Phil Hughes. Neither did anything wrong, but it was quite wrong for Agnew opportunistically to suggest there was any link between Hughes' and so called sledging on the cricket field. He simply does not have either the right, or the moral authority to make such an arrogant generalized assessment. Perhaps he should reflect on the obvious glee he seemed to take 'terrorizing' opponents as a fast bowler when he was a young man. For Agnew to do this so close to the death of Hughes and immediately prior to a limited overs series where the Australians play England and India, and later co-host a World Cup with New Zealand where it will play England first, is very unwise. If there was not enough motivation for the Australians to want to ruthlessly maul England again, Agnew's arrogance has provided just that bit more.

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About the Author

Adam Hughes Henry is the author of three books, Independent Nation - Australia, the British Empire and the Origins of Australian-Indonesian Relations (2010), The Gatekeepers of Australian Foreign Policy 1950–1966 (2015) and Reflections on War, Diplomacy, Human Rights and Liberalism: Blind Spots (2020). He was a Visiting Fellow in Human Rights, University of London (2016) and a Whitlam Research Fellow, Western Sydney University (2019). He is currently an Associate Editor for The International Journal of Human Rights (Taylor and Francis).

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