Hughes wants dual formats for Blues

By his own admission, Daniel Hughes wasn't ready for first-class cricket when opportunity knocked towards the end of the 2012-13 summer.

Hughes had just turned 24 – an age by which plenty of batsmen have already flourished – but hindsight tells him he didn't have the necessary tools to produce his best on the big stage.

He made 26 and 21 not out in that match, and didn't play again for a couple of seasons. His return in 2014-15 was a one-off, involved a couple more scores in the twenties, but the breakthrough still hadn't come.

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Instead, Hughes was battling hamstring and quad injuries, and was short of where he wanted to be in both body and mind.

Through several summers of frustration at the Blues, punctuated by stints with both the Sixers and the Thunder in the KFC Big Bash League, NSW selectors continued to offer him a contract, even as he considered the possibility that his future might have lay  elsewhere.

"The first couple of years I was in the squad I really put pressure on myself to score those runs – I really wanted to be in that Shield side," Hughes told cricket.com.au on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, where the Blues are in a pre-season camp and playing 50-over trial matches against their state counterparts.

"There is so much talent at New South Wales cricket, and there were a couple of years there where I thought maybe I should move to another state, maybe see if I can make my way somewhere else.

"But the selectors showed faith in me, they kept contracting me.

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"Even through injury – I was pulling hamstrings and quads, but they showed the faith.

"Looking back, I wasn't ready for that next step (to first-class cricket) – physically or mentally. So I think getting that extra two years' experience really helped me last season."

Because last season was the watershed.

For Hughes, now 27, it all clicked.

A purple patch of runs culminated in an unbeaten triple century for New South Wales in the Futures League last November, and suddenly he was very much back on the radar.

Image Id: ~/media/5D1E8D6E96724B61AA6AEBE80563661D Image Caption: Hughes hit a half-century on the Sunshine Coast last weekend // Cricket.com.au

At the time, Blues coach Trent Johnston – a man who Hughes attributes much of the credit for his successful second coming – said the left-hander was "knocking on the door".

By December, he broke it down to return to the First XI.

And while it didn't initially go to plan, experience and lessons learned helped ensure Hughes remained unperturbed.

"We went all the way up to Mackay, and I got a half-volley second ball and I nicked it," he laughs.

"But that's the way I'd been playing in the Second XI – just going out and playing my shots and expressing myself out in the middle.

"That transitioned in the Shield stuff and sometimes it can happen – it's not going to happen for you all the time.

"I knew I was hitting the ball well and a big score was just around the corner."

Hughes was right. After making 65 in a Shield clash against the Warriors in New Zealand, Perth was the venue for the hard-hitting southpaw's maiden first-class hundred in February.

After years of trying, he had cracked the code, and his fine 124 was followed by 54 in the second innings – his third score of 50-plus in as many knocks.

"I'd been in the squad for four years waiting for that opportunity, then finally getting that hundred, it was a dream come true really," Hughes reflects.

"The wicket was pretty flat, the ball was swinging around a little bit, but just to get that hundred felt fantastic."

Hughes followed it up with another hundred two matches later, this one achieved in more flamboyant style – four successive fours to hit both three figures and the winning runs against Tasmania.

"In the second innings 'TJ' (Johnston) came up to me and said, 'Right, we need 150, just go out there and do your thing. Have an open mind, play your shots'.

"And it came off that day.

"I was batting with Benny Rohrer … he said to me, 'No-one's going to remember a 90 not out, why don't you try and get a hundred?'

"I said, 'Righto, I'll see what I can do' and I ended up hitting four fours off the last four balls."

Hughes made a half-century for the Blues in a trial game last weekend and is riding a wave of confidence that he hopes will carry him all the way to a spot in NSW’s Matador Cup side for just the second time.

A new-found belief in his ability, a more disciplined lifestyle, and the continued faith of Johnston have all merged to push the batsman toward new heights.

"I've really concentrated on my diet and fitness – I think that played a really big role (in last season's success)," Hughes explains.

"And I've really just made a pact with myself that whatever cricket I play, just to really enjoy it, and score as many runs as I can.

"Now that we've been playing these trials games and training up here with the white ball, I want to make that Matador Cup squad and play as many formats for New South Wales as I can.

"I think there's a bit of wriggle room with the (Australia representatives) playing in South Africa … I think there'll be a couple of spots up for grabs so I know I have to keep training hard and scoring runs in these trials games."

Hughes is currently without a BBL contract (a fact he says was a "blessing in disguise" last summer as it afforded him time to adequately prepare for the second half of the Shield season) but is keen to return to the six-week carnival of cricket.

In the meantime, his focus is turning one successful summer into two, and many more thereafter.