Tom Cooper opens up on ‘massive mistake’ rebuilding career after Phillip Hughes’s death

In the days after Phillip Hughes’s death, Michael Clarke urged Australian cricket to summon the opener’s spirit and fight on.

“We must listen to it,” an emotional Clarke said at Hughes’s packed funeral in Macksville.

“We must cherish it. We must learn from it. We must dig in and get through to tea. And we must play on.”

They did that on Monday at the SCG, 10 years after Hughes’s final innings of 63 not out at the ground, with flags flying at half mast and players wearing black armbands.

They will do it again on Wednesday, when players observe a moment’s silence on the 10-year anniversary of Hughes’s passing, days before his 26th birthday.

In the immediate aftermath, cricket found a way to embody Hughes’s spirit during its toughest summer.

Australia won the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and 50-over World Cup on home soil in the ensuing months.

David Warner hit an emotional century in the first Test back in Adelaide and kissed the SCG turf as he passed 63 in Sydney.

Steve Smith also used that summer to place himself among the greats, hitting four centuries in four Tests to help set up his era of dominance.

But the sport was never truly the same.

Few players had a right to be as impacted as Tom Cooper.

Cooper was at the non-striker’s end when Hughes was hit at the SCG, but also the fellow NSW north coast junior’s best friend and housemate.

“It’s easy now looking back, I was f****d,” Cooper said.

“I fractured my skull in my first year. I got hit by Shane Harwood at the MCG. I didn’t see it, turned my head and got hit millimetres from where he got hit.

“Then you see that, and you think I am lucky to be alive.”

Cooper attempted to “just get straight on with it”, throwing himself into an English summer in Somerset, but admitted “in hindsight it was a massive mistake”.

“I averaged 20-something (for the next 18 months). It probably cost me playing for Australia in a way,” Cooper said.

“You’re not scared, but it’s in the back of your mind.

“There was a period where I was stuffed. But (even after that) whenever there is a dodgy wicket or that extra yard of pace, it never goes away.

“Time heals things. I have replayed it that many times. But it was just a freak accident.”

Hughes’s long-time coach Neil D’Costa spent the best part of two months away.

“But that wasn’t the answer,” he said.

“Because there were 1000 little kids who needed to keep playing cricket, and they were relying on me to go there and coach and say it’s OK.”

D’Costa had welcomed the then teenager to Sydney and remained his mentor until the end.

“No one knew what to do, no one knew what to say, and no one knew how to feel,” he said.

“Ten years later, no one knows what to do, no one knows what to say and no one knows how to feel.

“I can’t speak on behalf of everyone, but I am still lost. I still just have those moments where I can’t believe he’s gone.

“And then I have moments where I go to tears.”

In the 18 months after Hughes’s death, five Australians retired from Test cricket.

Clarke, Chris Rogers, Shane Watson and Mitchell Johnson all spoke about how Hughes’s passing had impacted them.

“I wrestled with the fact that it could have been me,” Johnson wrote in his autobiography.

“I wasn’t scared of being hurt; I was terrified that it could have been me that hurt him.

“It was my job to intimidate batsmen. To bowl short and fast. To make them play from the fear of being hit by the ball. I questioned all of that.

“And when I did bowl a bouncer and hit Virat Kohli on the helmet in Adelaide during the first Test match after Hughesy’s death, I felt sick.

“Cricket lost a little bit of its soul when Phillip died ... I don’t think it is a coincidence that so many of us finished up after that.”