Middlesex County Cricket Club is delighted to announce the addition of Australian left handed opening batsman Phillip Hughes to their squad for the forthcoming season.
Hughes, 20, fresh from celebrating a call up to the Australian national test side, will join Middlesex on a short-term contract for the first six weeks of the 2009 season as cover for Middlesex’s overseas signing Murali Kartik, who will be absent due to his participation at the IPL tournament.
New Middlesex CCC Managing Director of Cricket Angus Fraser had this to say of the club’s new signing;
“To have signed Phillip for the early part of the season is a major coup for Middlesex, as there is no secret of the fact that many respected voices in the game are billing Phillip as one of the most talented young batsmen in world cricket today.
Phillip arrives with us in early April and will be available for our season’s opening Championship fixture against Glamorgan at Lord’s. The addition of such a top quality batsman to our top order will prove invaluable in the early part of the season, given the absence of both Andrew Strauss and Owais Shah.”
Hughes’ brief record as a batsman and his rise to a call up to the national test side has been nothing short of phenomenal. Making his first class debut at the age of just 18, he finished his first season with New South Wales with a first class batting average of 62.11 and was instrumental in his side’s victory in the Sheffield Shield final, with his 116 making him the youngest ever player to score a hundred in the final.
He joins Middlesex in a rich vein of form, as he is currently the second highest run scorer in this winter’s Sheffield Shield, scoring 963 runs at an average of 68.78; this performance has won him the Bradman young player of the year award of 2009.
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