Oz opener Hughes seeks out his guru and Tendulkar in India

NAGPUR - Out of favour Australian opener Phil Hughes is in Nagpur working on his apparent weaknesses against the short ball with his coach Neil D’Costa.

D’Costa is looking after a cricket academy here and raves about the facilities and future.

Hughes could have come home with his other New South Wales teammates this week, but has stopped off at Nagpur to work on his cricket with D’Costa and catch up with Sachin Tendulkar.
According to The Australian, Hughes is happy and unbroken despite suffering the disappointment of being dropped during the Ashes series and insists he was coming to Nagpur to work on his batting.

“The goal is to always get better. I had always planned to catch up with Neil no matter what happened. I wanted to get in the nets with him and keep working on my game,” Hughes said.
D’Costa is evasive when pressed about what the pair are working on.

“I speak to Michael Clarke and all my students at regular intervals and work with them when I can,” he said.

“It’s about mechanics, your biomechanics things are always changing. The world will think the key is to put Phil in front of a bowling machine and bowl bouncers all day. The mechanics of cricket are a little more advanced than that, despite what you hear from commentators,” he added.
“We aren’t working on specifics, but one thing I know from working with kids, through adolescence and into their early adulthood, is that your technique does change and you need to keep addressing the biomechanics of it to understand how you are playing,” he said.
Pushed further he admits he saw something in England. I won’t tell you and I won’t tell anyone else, but I did think there was something in his (Hughes) mechanics that he needed working on, 100 per cent,” D’Costa said.

The little opener is also turning to the Little Master. He intends to fly to Mumbai on Monday and hopes to have dinner with Tendulkar. Hughes promises to gorge himself on cricket. (ANI)