Phil Hughes head injury: He had one weakness - it has come back to haunt him His reputation was formidable. Against the impressive might of Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel in Durban, he had scored centuries in each innings of his second Test. He was 20. Now the boy with the unerring eye and rustic method was in England to win the Ashes. It could not be more romantic. Nor did he disappoint at first. Before the opening week of May was out, he had scored three hundreds in five innings for Middlesex with a lowest score of 57. His average for the county remains 143.50. The left-hander carved at will through point and blasted the ball through the covers with alacrity, making room outside his off stump with gleeful abandon. His maverick batting was matched by his country-lad's diffidence. This was going to be a whole heap of fun, if not for England. Hughes had made a deep impression. Unfortunately, he then ran into a pair of old England hands. At Worcester, playing against England A in the last match before the Ashes started, Steve Harmison plied him with some short stuff. Anything pitched up was being given the treatment. The folksy method which was so endearing was suddenly, brutally exposed. In both innings, Hughes was out to bouncers. Harmison's best friend and fellow paceman, Andrew Flintoff, gave him more of the same in Cardiff, usually from round the wicket, and Hughes looked almost lost, his footwork unable to extricate him from trouble because he had none. It was tragically ironic that he should be so catastrophically damaged by a bouncer at the Sydney Cricket Ground today. On the first day of a Sheffield Shield match, batting for his new state, South Australia, against his home state, New South Wales, he was hit on the side of the head by the fast bowler Sean Abbott as he tried to hook. The harsh truth of the matter, as Hughes will have known only too well, is that once a weakness to short-pitched bowling is perceived it is invariably only a couple of boundaries away from being delivered. Hughes was going well, having reached 62 on one of those days when he looked as though he was batting back in the farmyard at Macksville. Players frantically call for help as Phil Hughes lies stricken at the Sydney Cricket Ground (Getty) He was making it mighty difficult for the selectors to ignore him. With 26 Test matches behind him he had never quite lived up to that rich early promise, though he has become slightly more refined. Not posh batting exactly but without the rough edges of yore. The whole point about players such as Hughes is that they are always attractive propositions precisely because they are out of the norm, exactly because of where they came from. Only last August his friend, the Australia captain and former NSW colleague, Michael Clarke, said Hughes had it in him to become a 100-Test player. He was still only 25, after all. Clarke's injury seemed to open the way for Hughes to make his return against India next week, though it would have to be in the middle order, when it was as an opener that his early reputation burgeoned. He left a couple of Abbott's bouncers, then decided to take one on. Observers say he was too early on the shot and as he turned his head with the weight of his bat-swing the ball hit him behind the left ear. Staggering for a moment with hands on knees, he then collapsed on to the pitch face first without breaking his fall. The batsman was staking his claim for a Test recall (Getty) The incident was also tough on the 22-year-old Abbott, who only made his debut for Australia last month. Last month, Ben Rohrer of NSW failed to evade a bouncer from the Victoria fast bowler - and former team-mate -Chris Tremain in Melbourne and took a blow to the side of the helmet. No serious injury was detected but Rohrer is still recovering. A few days ago, Ahmed Shehzad, the Pakistan opener, suffered what was described as a minor skull fracture after being hit on the head by a bouncer from Corey Anderson in the first Test against New Zealand in Dubai. He was on 176 at the time and stumbled into his wicket. Perhaps the evidence is anecdotal, but more players are struck on the head in modern big cricket than in the days before helmets. There is probably more short-pitched bowling but the helmet, while not lending invincibility, offers a confidence that an attacking shot may be possible without too much to fear. There will be some hand-wringing about the safety of helmets, and their manufacture is a constantly evolving process. But Hughes was the victim of a desperately sad sporting accident. Helmet equipment cannot protect everywhere, manufacturers admit The manufacturer of the helmet Phil Hughes was wearing has said the company is continually working to make its products safer, but that the area where the batsman was hit is very difficult to protect. Masuri, whose products are popular with international cricketers, said in a statement it was actively seeking as much TV footage of the incident as possible, to be able to see more conclusively exactly where the player was hit. "From the footage and pictures currently available to Masuri, it appears Hughes was struck by the ball to the rear of the grille and below the back of the shell, missing his Masuri Original Test model helmet," the company said. This is a vulnerable area of the head and neck that helmets cannot fully protect, while enabling batsmen to have full and proper movement. The sentiments were echoed by Chris Taylor, the former Yorkshire batsman who now runs equipment retailer All Rounder Cricket in Leeds. The helmet doesn't protect all of the head, there's a gap for your eyes, there's a gap where your neck is, so you have to expect some blows at some stage and this is very unfortunate for Phil Hughes. Taylor said. "Once the helmet starts trying to cover the neck as well, if that's where Phil Hughes has been hit, it's going to restrict your movement as a batsman," he added.