Phillip Hughes was used to being asked questions about his place in the team, in the batting order, in the pecking order. He looked you in the eye and answered them quietly, but professionally. But it was when he talked about the place he came from, and the people that mattered most to him, that he lit up.
In July, I interviewed Hughes for a piece that was to appear in the 2015 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. The focus was not his latest effort to bat his way back into the Australian team – he was with the Australia A squad at the time, and about to crash an astonishing double century in a one-day game in Darwin – but the origins of a batting technique often described as "homespun", a topic of endless fascination for all who watched him play.
Hughes apologised for not picking up the phone at the arranged time. He'd been sick with a stomach bug, he said, adding in his direct way that "it was comin' out both ends". He'd be right for the next day's match, though, no worries. For the next 40 minutes, Hughes talked about his early days on the farm at Macksville, how his battles in the yard with his older brother, Jason, influenced the cricketer he became. How they pioneered day-night Test matches under a big spotlight, playing for hours until they were called inside. How they mocked up sponsors' signs reminiscent of the old Mercantile Mutual ones of the early '90s.
"If you hit that it was automatically 100 runs," he said, "but they didn't get hit much." The windows did, but fortunately the family "knew a glass man" who was called upon to fix them.
Hughes described watching his father, Greg, on the banana patch, climbing up ladders, picking bunches of bananas and lugging them down on his shoulder, then walking them up the hills.
"He'd be absolutely knackered after a day's work. That has probably rubbed off on me, that work ethic," Hughes said.
"I actually hinted to him, it was getting so tough on his body, that it tired him out. I could see it in his eyes, and I wanted him to focus on the cattle."
Hughes moved to Sydney to be a cricketer when he was 17. He worked hard to become a Test player and, after his first couple of axings, even harder to get back into the side. He made sacrifices, leaving his family, friends and teammates in NSW for a fresh start in South Australia.
But while others took off on overseas adventures during breaks in the relentless cricket schedule, Hughes said his idea of a holiday was to go back to Macksville.
"There's always work to be done," he said. "Jumping on a tractor, mulching a paddock, planting some winter feed." He loved to "jump on a four-wheel bike and go for a ride".
Hughes headed "straight back home" at the end of last summer, when he initially wasn't picked in the team to tour South Africa. "My holiday is getting back there, helping Dad on the farm. It really refreshes me, to be fair."
He didn't sook when he was dropped or overlooked, he just made more runs. Perhaps the appetite for runs stemmed from the fact that when he and his brother jotted out a team list, Phillip was listed in every batting position. "He had to get me out 10 times before he could have one bat, that's how much he loved bowling" Hughes said. "I didn't complain one bit."
I don't pretend to have known Hughes well, but in that one interview he revealed more about himself and where he came from than can be learned from bumping into players in hotel lobbies and cricket grounds during cricket tours. He was generous, expansive and humble, offering to chat again anything needed checking later.
It says a great deal about Hughes that he was loved by his captains, Michael Clarke and Ricky Ponting, sharing a manager with the latter, while past Australian captains watched his career with admiration, often finding it difficult to fathom why others had been picked ahead of him.
Just before Hughes was dropped during the 2009 Ashes in England, where his rib cage was targeted by Steve Harmison and Andrew Flintoff, Steve Waugh marvelled at the resilience of the boy who had thrived so spectacularly in his maiden series in South Africa.
"He is so mentally tough for a 20-year-old. I certainly wasn't half as tough at that age,' said Waugh, himself so famous for his mental fortitude.
"He is a very together kid . . . He doesn't care how he looks, it's just how many runs he's going to get and he's going to get a lot of runs. If people think he's got some sort of weakness mentally or technically and they take their foot off the pedal, they will pay the same price as South Africa did."
Allan Border, a famously hard-bitten captain, is another who respected Hughes' toughness and relentless runmaking. Justin Langer, who became a mentor to Hughes, adored him. Even when he was struggling, he fronted up to journalists with a firm handshake, no matter that they had derided his technique when he was compulsively nicking to the slips the previous summer.
Hughes' death is an unspeakable loss, most of all for his family, friends and teammates. It's a privilege to have watched and written about him.
