Despite the extreme rareness of such injurious deaths, the recent tragedy in first-class cricket was a death waiting to happen.
Before about 1975, the bowling of bouncers was an exploit used sparingly - apart from the occurance of "bodyline" in the 1930s. It is the over-competitiveness of modern sport which tends to forget the notion that sport needs to have being friendly game as its impregnably strongbasis which ultimately is responsible for the situation ,there was an escalation of the short pitched ball usuage during the Lillee and Thompson period of Australian Test cricket,then the West Indies for quite a period had a cluster of great fast bowlers but at times they bowled 3 to 5 bounchers in an over and the balance of West Indian cricket with their traditional use of spinners as well as quickies sadly declined.
Now a lot of focus is about knowledge. Every team knows and works on the slight weaknesses of individuals opponents and Philip Hughs was said to have a weakness against the bouncer.
I would like to see this terrible tragedy enable a stronger sense of sportsmanship to come back into the game that if a batsman has such a weakness it is simply not exploited in the way it has been in recent years. Fred Trueman and Brian Statham of England and Wesley Hall of West Indies in the 50s and 60s (and Ray Lindwall and Keith Miller of Australia before that) used the bouncer sparingly and prefered to get the batsman out with cricketing skill.
It is also about temptation. Batsmen are tempted to play the hook shot which is a valid and correct run-getting shot- and their preparedness to play this shot even when they are not quite sure they are going to make contact with the bat encourges the bowler to put the fielder in position at long leg for a boundary catch and bowl more short balls than normal wisdom would dictate. Coaches need to teach safety first against the short ball so that the hook is only attempted when the batsman knows he has swayed out of the balls line and is not going to get hit.
I am not imputing any blame whatsoever to the individual players involved who were clearly the best of friends with the victim (their former team-mate) -in particular the unfortunate bowler.It is just that they themselves have become an inescapable part of cricket,s modern ethos. They are victims too!
Umpires are now instructed to try and limit the number of short pitched balls per over but this directive is difficult to apply consistently.
The bouncer has long been a worry in the game. I remember seeing Colin Cowdrey brave an assult from Charlie Griffith in the 1966 Nottingham Test Match to score 96 whilst Tom Graveney played a brilliant untroubled 109 showing a hugh contrast in their batting styles and confidence against the shorter ball. Many thought Griffith threw his bouncer and this was a constant source of speculation and controversy. I do not doubt though that the more confident player -a Graveney even-could yet get hit and be subject to danger. Iam not sure where the correct balance lies between safety and a healthy contest- but it will be obviously have to move more in the direction of safety.At the same time as Mike Selvey has pointed out in his excellent article in Tuesday Guardian ,some thought obviously needs to be given to the re-design of the batting helmet. Could it be extended to cover the brain stem towards the neck?Would this prove practicable ?He reminds us however that no protective equipment has a guaranteed safety-an fatalities can occur when other parts of the body than the head are struck - and have occured to fielders and umpires as well as batsmen.
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