This is Phil Hughes' third crack at test cricket. Both other occasions had early success (2 hundreds vs. South Africa the first time, and one against Sri Lanka the second) but soon after the flaws in his technique were exposed and he was dropped. This time hasn't seen the stunning success of the earlier attempts, but rather he has grafted out a couple of decent scores in tough circumstances in the last few tests. He still has a unique approach, but there is a level of grit and determination that wasn't there before. Hopefully it will last.
Two things stood out for me in his innings. Firstly, he seemed untroubled that he was completely upstaged by Ashton Agar. He worked out very quickly what his job was (give Ashton the strike) and he stuck to it. Which brings me to the second thing. Hughes, more than the players before him in the match, remembered that runs are runs even if you score them one at a time. Everybody else, including to some extent Agar, seemed to think that the only way to score was to hit the rope. A number of the English for example were at 12,16 or 20 runs before they scored less than a boundary, and on a couple of occasions it was only miss hits that stopped them going on in that fashion. The rest of the team could learn from this- rotate the strike.
Agar's innings was pure joy because it was so unexpected. He was an unknown quantity even to most Aussies. He hit cleanly and often, and each hit was more and more demoralising for the English. The best part of it was that he used very good technique. At no point did he seem to be slogging. Better yet, he defended well. This is the other thing that was missing from most of the match (haven't seen any of the Cook-KP partnership yet)- good defence. Agar seemed to know when to defend and how to. If he keeps this up I can't see him being at eleven for very long.
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