The game goes on after tragic week

The longest of weeks ended as a clammy, breathless dusk settled over Glenelg beach, not far from the park where three days earlier a team of the nation’s finest young cricketers were taking their next sizeable step towards claiming their Baggy Green dream.

The day that the game which remains a synonym for Australia’s languid summer holidays, its celebratory season and our innate sense of fair play changed forever.

“Don’t bowl so fast,” chided a young girl at her even younger brother as she swung a scaled-down bat at a sodden tennis ball that fizzed past her shoulder to be pouched by dad, standing in ankle-deep water behind the stumps.

While her flinch was as much triggered by the comet-tail of salt water that sprayed from the ball as it eluded her swipe, it was a reproach heard time and again in impromptu matches played on beaches, in backyards and at family barbecues.

And one that will now doubtless capture parents’ interest far more keenly than would have been the case a week ago, before he sustained his fatal injury.

But the brother simply grinned, and the game went on.

The following morning, a small boy arrived with his dad at the Adelaide Oval Plaza where a carpet of flowers and cricket bric-a-brac was growing, beneath a hauntingly frozen video screen that projected his image, arms folded, ever smiling, alongside his cruelly curtailed time line - 1988-2014.

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Adelaide Oval has become a place of remembrance this week // Getty Images

“Is that the man that died?” the boy asked, with heart-melting innocence, of his dad who stood several metres away and was gently lobbing a bright green rubber ball that his son was nudging back along the concrete with the yellow plastic bat that he wielded like a baseballer.

“Yes mate,” replied the father, who was then stumped for an answer when the supplementary question “why?” immediately followed.

The game then went on, in silence, until the pair gently laid the ball among the other inscribed offerings, behind the imposing new grandstand that some suggest should now carry his name.

And beneath a table that hosts a memorial book, the first entry in which is a heartfelt two-line inscription from a young boy that says simply ‘I love you’.

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Cricketers shake hands after a match at Crib Point recreation reserve in Melbourne // Getty Images

Obvious among the floral tributes, full-size and miniature bats, balls and apparel on the Plaza is an annotated playing shirt and club cap as worn by his Adelaide grade side, East Torrens – the Eastern Reds.

At Campbelltown Oval on Saturday afternoon, where the Reds posted his club number (598) on their perfunctory scoreboard, the regular summer weekend sounds were absent save for the rustling of a south-westerly breeze through the perimeter eucalypts.

An elderly man carrying a shopping bag and a fistful of roses seemingly snipped from his own yard stood on the pitch, crossed himself and then shuffled slowly to the scoreboard where he did the same before depositing the flowers at the doors of the clubrooms, where blinds were drawn.

“Are you here because you are an East Torrens cricket supporter, or just a fan of the game?” he asked.

Then, sensing the real reason, he added: “Or are you just here to remember him?”

East Torrens has known recent tragedy.

Earlier this year, their young captain Michael Cranmer’s twin brother – also a member of the Reds’ first-grade team, died in an accident in the New South Wales town of Bowral that is known for its connection to cricket above all else.

Despite his misgivings and on the gentle urging of his mother, Michael Cranmer took to the field the following Saturday with his thoughts fixedly with his twin rather than events on-field.

But the game went on, and was decided when Michael took a heroic, diving catch that sealed a narrow Reds’ victory.

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Players celebrate a wicket at Princes Park in Melbourne // Getty Images

While Adelaide’s grade cricket was suspended on Saturday, other competitions including the Adelaide and Suburban Cricket Association played on under a baking late-November sun.

At Cowandilla Reserve, where the jets that brought him to and from his international and interstate playing commitments throttle menacingly low on their final airport approach, the Plympton Footballers Cricket Club were at the crease, on the hard wicket, and working up a sweat.

Apart from the black arm bands sported by each member, this could have been any Saturday.

In the perma-pine gazebo that doubled as the visitors’ dressing room, they waited for their turn at bat and shared stories of the previous Saturday night’s hijinks, the unplayable quick they encountered recently and debated who should fill the water bowl for their panting Labrador mascot.

But the conversation stopped short when, on the final ball before the afternoon’s first drinks break, hard-hitting middle-order batsman ‘Brocky’ Pomeroy fended off a short-pitched ball that reared towards his face and managed to find the splice of his bat before falling harmlessly on the leg side.

“I knew it was going to be a bouncer,” Pomeroy reassured his teammates as he removed his white protective helmet, slugged down water and prepared to resume his innings.

“I think I went forward instead of going back … but I shit myself there for a second.”

Nervous laughter followed, but the game went on and Plympton will defend 225 when they take to the crease next weekend.

In Perth, where grade cricket went ahead as scheduled, Ashton Agar – the lanky young spinner who batted so valiantly alongside him during last year’s Ashes Test in Nottingham – was dismissed for 98 playing for University against Bayswater-Morley.

Eerily, it was the same score that he fell for in his famous Test debut, a record innings by a number 11 batsman and one that all but overshadowed his partner’s equally memorable contribution of 81 that finished – as history will forever show he remains – not out.

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Ashton Agar and Phillip Hughes during their unforgettable partnership in the first Ashes Test of 2013 // Getty Images.

And in the United Arab Emirates overnight, despite play in the final Test between Pakistan and New Zealand being abandoned on the day his death was announced, Brendon McCullum unleashed one of the most remarkable batting performances of recent times.

The fastest Test century plundered by a New Zealand batsman. And he was almost embarrassed for having done so.

After being ultimately dismissed for 202, the former New Zealand captain – who played against him in Tests and ODIs and memorably opened the batting with him for one T20 appearance for New South Wales in 2009 – spoke not of his feats, but of his friend.

McCullum had played with a blazing bat, a heavy heart and his lost Australian mate’s initials penned on his playing shirt, admitting that neither he nor his teammates were able to immerse themselves in the match in which they were notionally involved given events of earlier in the week.

"Our focus at the moment is not on our performances, it's all about Phil," McCullum conceded.

But the Test match went on, and will go on again today and maybe even tomorrow.

One of the few certainties to emerge amid the shadow and pain of the past week is that the game that came to indelibly define his life, a life so unimaginably and unfairly cut short, will endure.

And no matter how, where or by whom that game is played, it will forever remain a tangible celebration of Phillip Hughes.