RIP Phillip Hughes. Those have to be the saddest words ever written in the name of cricket. This has to be cricket's saddest day.

Others have died playing the game. Others have died playing other games. But no cricketer so high profile can have died so publicly, and in such grim circumstances. No sportsman's death can have come as such a shock.

Hughes was a Test cricketer, with all that imports in Australian sport. For all anyone knows, dammit, he had been pencilled into the Test team again in the hour before his calamitous accident. It was between him and two others for a vacancy in the team to play India in Brisbane from next Thursday, and he was in the runs again.

Whether anyone has the stomach to play that match now, who knows? Whether the match even can or should be played, again, who can say? As Hughes' many devoted friends in cricket gathered – literally and in cyberspace – and huddled and hugged and wept and tried to find their bearings and failed, none looked remotely up for playing a match or watching one.

If they do play, it will only be because of a solemn consensus that Hughesy would have wanted it. He was never a man for a fuss.

For all the drama that surrounds cricket, for all its gravity and froth, for the reaching for glory, the falling short, the fame, the infamy, for the way cricket is held up as a metaphor for life, it is just a game. Yes, in Australia, we play it for sheep stations, but not life and death. Then death came into play anyway.

It is the game Hughes fell in love with as a boy, and applied himself to like few others, and wrestled with, and was sometimes vexed by, and more often master of, and for all anyone knows would have mastered again. In cricket terms, he was young enough for his best years still to lie ahead. In life, he was young enough for it still to be beginning. In three more days, he would have turned 26.

Within this game, there are games. Hughes knew this. Even as Sean Abbott's bouncer thudded into the pitch at the SCG shortly after lunch on Tuesday and speared towards him, he knew the score. So did Abbott. So did all of cricketing Australia. It was this type of ball that had troubled him more than most.

Abbott bowled it to ruffle him, to distract him, to break his concentration, to manoeuvre him out of position, to provoke him to play a false shot, to that ball or one soon after. This was a game. Abbott did not bowl it to harm. Feel for him; he has a life sentence.

This much we must believe, that Hughes' last thought simply was, here's four runs. Here's another step towards 100. Here's the Test door comng ajar again. That can and must be his family's consolation, that he died doing what he loved.

This much we can also believe, that he can barely have known what hit him. He lost consciousness on the pitch, and never regained it. He was not in pain when he died, and he had his family around him. He was 25 years old, and 63 not out. There was so much more to come.

In lieu, at least there is what there was of Hughes' short life to cherish. He was a humble man, country bred, without airs, and an intriguing cricketer, with a way of batting that was all his own. It brought thousands of runs, some would say despite his technique, he would say because of it. He modified it, refined it, but resisted all importuning to abandon it; in this, he had singular courage of his convictions. It was his hallmark.

At his best, he was exciting, never more so than when slashing a hundred in each innings of his second Test, against the formidable South Africans in Durban, founding a series win for a then woebegone Australian team. In recent Australian cricket history, those innings were landmarks. He was 19.

Fits and starts followed, and in the meantime every pub coach in Australia was on his case. He never touched those heights again. He never will.

Hughes' death shakes us because it seemed impossible for a sportsman to be fatally injured this way, surrounded by protection, without warning, instantaneously, innocently, as in a car crash. It makes us more mortal than yesterday. Because of it, every part of the game will be looked at again: rules, protocols, protection, philosophy, culture.

His injury was a one in a you-name-a-number chance, only once previously inflicted by a cricket ball anywhere, said Cricket Australia doctor Peter Brukner. It is one too many.

In any other cricket year, this is a time of delicious anticipation, a week before the first Test, when nothing has happened and anything can. Not this year, not now. Instead, it is a time for mourning, for crying, for dwelling, for sighing, for holding hands and holding memories and holding up, and taking nothing in sport and in life for granted, not even that there will be a tomorrow, let alone another cricket match.