The cricket pitch as "unsafe workplace" : sports culture and the death of Phillip Hughes

This chapter explores another controversy, this one provoked by the death of Australian cricketer Philip Hughes in 2014. Much of the response to the tragedy, this chapter argues, was suffused with myth and nostalgia, deriving its emotional force from the sharp contrast between cricket's rather anachronistic image of gentility and the ugliness of Hughes' demise. To maintain this position, it was necessary to interpret the incident as a "tragic" or "freakish" accident that brought the loosely constructed transnational cricket community together in sadness. It resisted other perspectives, like that articulated by Hughes' father, Greg, who contended that on the day of his catastrophic injury, his son operated in an "unsafe workplace" characterised by physical and verbal intimidation.