On 29 July, an Australian batsman broke the record for his country’s highest List A score. That category is the 50-over counterpart to first-class cricket, covering one-day internationals and the tier of domestic games below. No Australian men’s team had ever seen a List A double century; our man reached 202 with a six from the last ball. In a reserve team tournament, he batted through Australia A’s entire innings against their South African counterparts. It was the centrepoint of a decent enough run. On 16 July he’d made an unbeaten first-class hundred against India A. On 31 July he made a List A half-century. On 2 August he made another. On 4 August Australia’s ODI squad was selected for an upcoming tour. He wasn’t in it. This was absolutely nothing new in the life of Phillip Joel Hughes.

If getting left out of Australian teams were a sport, Hughes would be Brad Hodge’s brilliant successor. From 2009 to 2013, Hughes was in and out of the Test team more times than David Warner was banned from Twitter. Arguing over Hughes became a national pastime: he was criticised for a sticky-taped technique, timid mentality, reckless batting, over-reliance on scoring square, generosity to slip cordons, panic against spin, and a Kryptonitic susceptibility to modest Kiwi seamer Chris Martin. Yet for those motivated by results, every time Hughes went back to domestic cricket he built an irrefutable massif of runs and waited in its shade for the selectors to arrive.

So preoccupied were they with his Test fortunes that they missed the idea that ODIs might be more his wicket. Here was a form of the game where attacking play was paramount, where any hint of width needed to be punished, where the cut shot could be king, where slips were scarce, where unorthodoxy was an advantage, where an edge would more often get you a single than get you out. In short, a form tailored to accommodate the perceived shortcomings of a particular young man while developing his recognised touch of genius.

Yet it was January 2013 – nearly four years after his Test debut – before Hughes was picked in a one-day side. He responded with a century, 112 against Sri Lanka at the MCG. He closed out that series with a bigger one, 138 not out in Hobart, then made 86 against the West Indies a few games later. But after a team-wide disaster in the brief Champions Trophy, Hughes was turfed. He had been given 12 ODIs.

Before long he was back, first as a one-off injury replacement in England, then for a random jaunt to India in October. His series was reasonable: 47, 83, 22, 11, 13, 23, forming some respectable opening partnerships with the anointed long-term prospect Aaron Finch. It all looked rather promising.

Hughes hasn’t played an ODI since.

And so it goes, on to the recent A games up in Darwin, and a great stinking pile of runs, a redolent mass heaped like a torn-open wildebeest carcass in the middle of a highway, only for chairman of selectors Rod Marsh to edge his jeep onto the gravel shoulder and continue on his way. “We pick an Australia A side, the kid gets a hundred, two hundred and two fifties, in between that his grandfather dies and he still doesn’t get picked,” said Marsh, an acknowledgement of the situation that went no distance towards rationalising it.

Australia’s selectors have become accustomed to dealing with Hughes this way. It’s almost the stuff of cricketing lore that as little more than a boy in his second Test he flayed Dale Steyn and company for twin centuries in a match, the youngest man to achieve that rare feat, then two games after that series was dropped. Everything since has been as peremptory: dropped in 2010 straight after 86 not out to win a chase against New Zealand; dropped in 2011 two games after his 88 set up an Australian win in South Africa; spoken of condescendingly by selectors as needing protection from that same team – his favoured opposition – on their return tour.

While the world swooned over Ashton Agar’s dreamy eyelashes at Trent Bridge in 2013, we forgot that our debutant date had been driven to the ball by Hughes. For a No11 to score a famous near-century he needs someone at the other end. Hughes made 81 not out that day in an innings of masterful control: attacking when required, supporting when possible, keeping the junior partner grounded. Perhaps Hughes had found his niche at No6?

He was moved to No4, and got one more Test.

A case can be made for any omission from a playing XI, less so entire squads. South Australia coach Darren Berry was bereft of ideas last week: it must have been reflex that made him say “There’s one simple answer when not selected, and that’s for Phillip to once again come back to the Redbacks and dominate.” Problem is that’s exactly what Hughes has already done, in first-class cricket and List A, in long form and short, against domestic and international opponents. It doesn’t mean a thing.

In the handful of Sheffield Shield games before this year’s Test trip to South Africa, Hughes had a four-match run of 204, 7, 67, 103, 0 and 118. He was left out of the team in favour of Alex Doolan and Shaun Marsh, players ranked 17th and 34th on that season’s Shield run tally, with career records that barely reach mediocre. Hughes, several years their junior, had more first-class centuries than the two combined. The latest snub has the same flavour: with the locked-in quartet of Michael Clarke, George Bailey, Glenn Maxwell and Finch, the last spot was essentially between Hughes and Steve Smith, a player who’s never made a List A hundred and averages 21 in ODIs.

It seems that all the numbers in the world can’t change the prevailing view. The theory is that Hughes looks fragile. He’s awkward to watch: hopping about at the crease, fidgeting, carving and swiping to score, poor at masking consternation. He can look terrible when he gets out, giving the impression that he’s less in control at that moment than other players. But none of that should actually matter in the face of his effectiveness. He was mocked for his struggle with spin during the 2013 India tour, but learned from it to grind out two ungainly but effective innings. However much his technique is critiqued, it has dominated bowling attacks at all levels of the game.

Hughes has a List A average of 48.23. The best in the Australia squad is Michael Clarke with 42.5. The rest are down in the 30s. When it comes to big scores Hughes has eight List A hundreds from 84 innings. Bailey has seven from twice that number. Clarke has nine from nearly three and a half times as many starts

A more useful stat is the ratio of scores above 50 per innings. Hughes crosses the half-century mark every 2.89 trips to the crease. Clarke and Finch strike at 3.5, Maxwell 3.83, Bailey 4.02, Smith 5.54. With Warner missing and Maxwell present, did the squad need another hard-hitting middle-order spinning all-rounder, or a proper opening batsman with a thirst for validation who just happened to be in peak form?

No one in Australian cricket racks them up like Hughes. He’s a run-scoring machine, but his struggles at international level have been entrenched by the response to them. It’s contraindicative to keep dropping a player for lacking confidence. Quickly the prophecy self-fulfils. Even if he strolls past Brian Lara’s Test record, he’ll still feel like he’s two games from the chop. In that situation, how can a player be anything but ill at ease?

Australian batsmen have enjoyed 6,849 individual innings in ODI cricket. Add to that the tens of thousands of limited-overs innings across Australian state comps, international tour warm-ups and sojourns to play in other domestic leagues. In all those trips to the crease, over five decades from the late 1960s, not one of them had ever walked back with a double century to his name. Hughes did.

He did it with a six off the last ball of the innings, immense composure in the face of history. It was his sixth of the day, a good deal more of his scoring coming in fours. His strike rate was an excellent but steady 133, not an adrenaline-insane 250. That all indicates far greater control than a big-swinging lottery innings that just happens to come off. Hughes faced 151 balls, half the allotted total, in batting through the entire innings. In effect it was the perfect 50-over innings, like a 10-pin bowler rolling a 300. It doesn’t matter. Phil Hughes is still not special enough.