Two years later, there were tears also in Kim Hughes' eyes as he handed in his commission as Australian captain, and in some quarters was ridiculed for failing to master his emotions. The Australian prime minister at the time was Bob Hawke, who was forever crying in public – while admitting his unfaithfulness, over his daughter's drug addiction, over Tiananmen Square – and was forever being mocked for it.

Even to allow your eyes to moisten in public, let alone pour forth, never was a done sort of thing. At The Oval in 1948, as Don Bradman was bowled for a famous duck in his last Test innings, fabled commentator John Arlott asked: "Was his eye a little misted at his reception, I wonder?" Bradman always firmly denied it.

Generations came and went. During the World Cup in 2007, former England batsman and Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer was found dead in his hotel room in Kingston, Jamaica. The circumstances were said at the time to be mysterious. Pakistan, having already lost to the West Indies and Ireland, was out of the tournament, yet three days later met its obligation to play a dead rubber against Zimbabwe. It was captain Inzamam Ul-Haq's last one-dayer. The overlapping emotions of the day moved him to helpless tears as he walked off. The match need not have been played, but was.

Every death prompts an exploration of who we are and what we stand for. Untimely death leads to deeper digging, untimely public death deeper still. In Australian culture, Test cricketers are family, never far from our consciousness, whether we like it or not. Falsely, but inescapably, they feel to us like intimates. It makes Hughes' shocking death a family tragedy for all the nation. It explains the sense of a whole country gathered in the national lounge room, eyes red, faces drawn, fumbling for the right words, contemplating the appropriate next move. There is no template.

Without knowing it, Australia's cricketers have shown a way. In the four dislocating days since Hughes' passing, their grief has been on public display: tears here, hugs there, a pall everywhere, and no attempt to hide or dispel it. Michael Clarke has screwed up his courage to speak publicly on behalf of Hughes' family, and the Australian team, and himself, in a newspaper column run through with pain. Addressing Hughes, he has said, more than once: "I love you." Whatever happens next, the public will view Clarke differently henceforth.