Queen Elizabeth II sends message to Phil Hughes’ family
Nice bit of PR for the Queen of Australia.
For those of you who don't know Philip Hughes was a 25 year old cricketer who was batting on Tuesday in an interstate cricket match when he was hit on the side of the head by the ball. The hit damaged an artery to the brain and he subsequently died on Thursday. The whole of Australia and the cricketing world has been in shock and mourning since the news broke - e.g. the international match between Pakistan and New Zealand was delayed for 24 hours, there have been an outpouring of people putting their cricket bats outside their doors as a sign of condolence.
As a teacher in NSW who also is involved with our school cricket teams this death has hit very hard as this is our national game, more than any other. People from other sports have also acknowledged his death e.g. Rafael Nadal (the Australian Open tennis clashes with international one-dayers so he would have some idea about cricket not to mention Wimbledon also coming around the time of the summer test series in the UK - often with the Lords test - the test that The Queen used to always attend although now she only attends when one of the 'big nations attends' such as Australia - and as such she would have been introduced to Hughes last year at Lords).
It is nice that she contacted the family (or someone in her office did on her behalf anyway) to send her condolences on the death of this fine young man and batsman.
The bowler is very distressed as you can imagine - he and Hughes were good friends as well.
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