Shaken by Phillip Hughes’ death from being hit by a bouncer, bowlers from the Australian and Indian sides have made a conscious effort to bowl the short ball and get the hesitation out of their systems before the first Test begins
Sidharth Monga05-Dec-2014
Scorecard1:14
‘Rahane looks most settled’ – Lalor
“The elephant in the room” is how a journalist described bouncers when he brought up what sounds like an uncomfortable topic. Little did he know. He wanted to ask Australia’s coach Darren Lehmann if the game will change after the tragic death of Phillip Hughes, which has drawn an almost uncharacteristically emotional reaction from whole of Australia. Lehmann’s response, before Australia’s first training session, was short. “Normal Test cricket. Good, hard cricket.” He of course didn’t know at that time how the first session would go.Possibly it was Lehmann’s cricketer’s instinct; possibly he said that because Australia have discussed bouncers. For there has been an abundance of bouncers in Adelaide; neither the Indians and the Cricket Australia XI bowlers at the Glenelg Oval nor the Australia quicks at the Park 25 Cricket Ground have held back with the bouncers. If anything it has seemed an almost conscious attempt to bowl those bouncers, and get the hesitation and reservation out of the system before the stakes get high, when a big crowd is not watching. They probably want to see how it feels like to bowl the bouncer, for they will have to bowl them sooner or later. They can’t go out of the game.A carpenter doesn’t give up his tools after an accident. Just that this accident, with Phillip Hughes dying off a blow from a bouncer, has been horrible beyond imagination. It has shaken carpenters around the world. The world is curious to see if they can handle the tools again. And from Ishant Sharma to Evan Gulbis, from Varun Aaron to Josh Lalor, from Mitchell Johnson to Umesh Yadav, from Sam Rainbird to Ryan Harris, everybody has been banging the ball halfway down the pitch.Virat Kohli negotiates one of many bouncers seen at the Glenelg Oval over the last two days•Getty Images and Cricket Australia
On the second day of the Indians’ tour game against the CA XI, there was period halfway into the first session when every batsman was pushed back into the crease. M Vijay wore one on the side of the helmet when he took his eye off a Gulbis bouncer and ducked into it. There was no crowd to react to it. There was no over-reaction from the fielders. Just a quiet walk up to the batsman presumably to ask him if he was all right. Vijay, for some reason, didn’t ask for a change of helmet. Usually they are good for just one blow.At the other end, Rainbird bounced Virat Kohli, who swayed out of its line. This was around the time both the batsmen had reached their fifties, and were retiring to let others have a hit. Both the new batsmen, Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane, had to face a few bouncers at the start of their innings. Rohit swayed out of the line, Rahane hooked. Even the last ball that Vijay faced was at his throat, and he nearly fended it into the lap of short leg.Even on the first morning, Jordan Silk saw one kiss his helmet grille the first ball he faced. “First ball, it was one that glanced the grille,” Silk said. “I tried to keep my eye on it, I guess, as best I could. That happens, I guess, in cricket. A little bit shaken, up but I just tried to stay composed. If anything, it probably got me going a little bit better. I guess all you can do is just try to face the next ball, and play it on its merit.” Later in the day when Aaron hit Seb Gotch with one, Kohli even applauded from the sidelines. It was quite a good ball, rising from not too short and catching Gotch in the arm.Over in the Australia nets, Johnson, Harris, Peter Siddle and Josh Hazlewood kept thudding into the baseball mitt that fielding consultant Greg Blewett held. Their batsmen, too, copped a few in the thighs and ribs. The batsmen didn’t shy away from hooking either. That Australia’s main bowlers were bowling on the centre wicket and not in the nets would have given both them and the batsmen the freedom and the space to bounce and to hook.Silk’s was a normal reaction to what is a normal part of cricket, but it will be scrutinised and reacted to closely in the coming week. When thousands will be in the stands, and millions are watching on TV, with the world media following closely, and super-slow-motion cameras from Channel 9 broadcasting every little reaction to every little thing. From whatever little evidence we have had over the last two days, the players are trying their best to be as normal about the bouncer as possible. It won’t be easy, but the sooner the cricketers get normal about it the better it will be.
