We're still in denial: Henriques

Ten days after he lost his close friend and former teammate Phillip Hughes, Blues allrounder Moises Henriques has spoken about the effect it has had on him as he attempts to pick up the pieces and get on with his own cricket career.

Speaking with the Big Sports Breakfast Weekend radio program, Henriques went into considerable depth as to the range of feelings he and teammates were feeling in the immediate aftermath of the Hughes tragedy, and re-lived his own return to the field in Sydney grade cricket yesterday (Saturday), which included an out-of-character verbal outburst.

“After the week that’s been, I think myself and a few of the other guys are still in a bit of denial of everything that’s happened and the extraordinary circumstances that were, (with) obviously such a unique situation of someone actually passing away on a cricket pitch, it’s quite hard to wrap your head around that as a cricketer,” the 27-year-old said.

“Then to see the effect of that on the family was very tough, and especially for everyone who has played with Phil and were close to Phil on numerous tours.

“It was a beautiful service up in Macksville, it seemed like a lovely place and you can definitely understand why Phil turned out to be such a lovable character like he was. He’s an absolute credit to his parents, and to his brother and sister, and everyone in Macksville.”

Henriques took 1-11 in his five overs for St George against Randwick-Petersham, but it was an unprovoked self-admonishment from the allrounder that provided the best indication of his headspace.

“I started yelling out all sorts of stuff for no particular reason, obviously just high on emotion,” he said.

“A few more games and hopefully I get back to some sort of level path.

“I was yelling at myself.

“I turned around basically and (was) trudging back to my mark basically yelling at myself.

“I think everyone at Petersham Oval was probably looking at me thinking, ‘what a goose that bloke is’.”

Asked if he intentionally bowled the short-pitched deliveries, Henriques replied: “I wasn’t even thinking about what I was trying to do, I was just going through the motions.”

“And then once the ball didn’t end up in the spot that a bowler would want it to, I just blew up for no reason,” he added.

“I just switched into automatic mode, I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing – I was just bowling because I had to bowl, to be honest.”

Henriques also appealed for an end to any association between teammate Sean Abbott – who bowled the delivery that struck Hughes – and the tragedy.

“He’s coping pretty well,” he said of Abbott.

“I guess from our point of view as fellow players, we’re trying to expel his name from the tragedy a little bit, because in my opinion I don’t think he’s any more at fault than any other fast bowler who’s ever bowled a bouncer in his career.

“We’re actually trying to remove his name from everything that’s happened, and just treat him as another one of the players.

“I think that's how he wants to be treated – (as) another one of the guys who went through the same thing; has lost a friend and lost someone close to them.

“It frustrates me when he gets named a lot because it escalates guilt a little bit, as if he should be feeling guilt.

“I certainly don’t think he should be feeling guilt at all, and I guess that’s why we’d prefer just to call it ‘the bowler’, rather than ‘Sean’.

Regardless of the decision that is arrived at by the state associations as to the playing of the round five Bupa Sheffield Shield matches from Tuesday, Henriques feels it is “unlikely that everyone will play”.

“Everyone reacts differently to these situations,” he added.

“If you’re injured and not ready to play physically, then you don’t play.

“I guess in this case you might not be ready to play mentally, so you’ve got to treat it the same way.

“The first session (since the tragedy) was really tough, batting in the nets, but with every session it gets a little bit easier and you get a little bit more confident.

“It’s probably not so much the skill acquisition, it’s more so your mental state of ‘do you actually want to be there at training at the moment after what’s happened?’.

“And your motivation – you feel hopeless, I guess.”

The allrounder also can’t bring himself to accept that it will simply be ‘business as usual’ in relation to short-pitched bowling when the first Commonwealth Bank Test and the Shield round begin on Tuesday.

“I’d like to say, ‘Yeah it should (go back to normal)’ but I’ve just lost one of my mates because of a short ball,” he said.

“I’d like to see some equipment improvements to make sure something like this never happens again, and that way we could continue playing in the aggressive manner that we played before, if that makes sense, to give the bowlers confidence that nothing like that will ever happen again.

“Everyone says it’s one in a million and all this stuff, but if we can make some improvements in technology that (allows us to) say none in a million, I think everyone will feel a bit better.”