So, cricket helmets to start featuring dropped sides/back like more enduro/AM/FR type bike helmets (Xen, etc)?

It really is just a horrible freak accident though.

I know it’s been mentioned above, but to me the ‘bouncer’ is just wrong as it’s a deliberate attempt to intimidate the batsman.

The bowler knows when he delivers it that he could harm the batsman, that’s moraly wrong and not ‘sportmanlike’!!

The worst injury in a match I’ve played in is when a batsman top edged a spin bowler’s delivery (circa 40 mph) into the face of the wicketkeepr, who was close behind the stumps. Cricket balls are hard, and there is always a risk of injury.

This was a freakishly unlucky incident, and if we’re going down the road you describe then we should eliminate rugby scrums and strong central defenders while we’re at it.

RIP – very sad news.

Opening batsmen myself and have always agreed with Boycs in helmets (see today’s T’graph). However, starting wearing one last season for the first time as facing 19 years olds fresh out of school on tasty wickets! At my age, I am become more scared fielding close. Current bats are so powerful….

Cricket may be approaching a turning point. A case for smarter ball technology before we end up like knights in armour.

This was a freakishly unlucky incident, and if we’re going down the road you describe then we should eliminate rugby scrums and strong central defenders while we’re at it.

Yes it was very unlucky and I don’t think a knee-jerk reaction to this tragedy would be a good idea. However there is a huge difference with rugby scrums or football tackles where deliberately dangerous play is strictly outlawed and punished, but is tolerated or even perhaps encouraged in cricket. If anything it should encourage some soul searching about the nature of the game and whether it needs to tone down the aggression. Mike Selvey in the guardian sums it up quite well I think

However there is a huge difference with rugby scrums or football tackles where deliberately dangerous play is strictly outlawed and punished, but is tolerated or even perhaps encouraged in cricket

Yes, but that presupposes short-pitched bowling is dangerous. I don’t think we can draw such a conclusion based on one incident, however tragic. When we did see a repeated problem – the bodyline series – the laws of the game were changed.

Well I’d say deliberately aiming the ball at the batsmen’s head could be described as intentionally dangerous yes. In that Mike Selvey article he says the England team practice bouncers with a helmet stuck on a post in the nets. Can you imagine the furore if football teams practised leg breaking tackles or if rugby teams practised the most effective way of collapsing a scrum?

Cricket balls are hard, and there is always a risk of injury.

Which is why it is unwise to aim it at someones head and this is an attempt to injure as they are aiming it at the batter not the wicket.

that presupposes short-pitched bowling is dangerous

Without meaning to be crass one just killed someone and I am note sure how we can debate this point. It is dangerous the real question would be how dangerous and is it acceptable.

Well I’d say deliberately aiming the ball at the batsmen’s head could be described as intentionally dangerous yes.

I wouldn’t. It’s intentionally intimidatory, but as I said before, this is one tragic incident, which I understand to be unique at this level.

Can you imagine the furore if football teams practised leg breaking tackles or if rugby teams practised the most effective way of collapsing a scrum?

Breaking legs and collapsing scrums are contrary to the laws of the game. But on the subject, we routinely see rugby players clattered into next week by entirely legitimate means…and of course the players practise for that.

As has just been tweeted:

There’s nothing like a freak and tragic accident to encourage people who don’t know what they’re talking about to suggest sweeping changes.

In sport, as in life, freak accidents can and do happen. Anyone who does pretty much anything is analysing those risks and deciding of that is what they want to do. If you are a first class opening batsman you are more than aware that the ball will come hurtling towards your head at some point, you either accept that or don’t, either is fine.

As a cricketer and a cycling I can tell you the “ban bouncers” argument is being received with the same way by the cricket community as the “make helmets compulsory” argument is by the cycling community. I.e. not very well at all.

Right now we don’t know whether it’s a freak accident or indicative of the very start of a trend – that’s the problem. As in the previously linked article, there are two trends in cricket that I think most would agree on – balls are being bowled faster and the game is being played more aggressively. It’s perfectly possible that we’re reaching a point now where the combination of the two will start to see increasingly severe incidents such as this even if not regularly fatal.

or it could be a freak accident that won’t happen again for 100 years even if trends continue. I guess that the issue is whether the risk is taken that it’s the former but it’d take people much better informed than me (or most commentators, players, etc) to give an informed comment that’s not based on hearsay, history or opinion.

I wonder if my suggestion above about helmets being brought down to the sides/back would have helped in this situation. If so then at least a redesign of helmets to cover that eventuality wouldn’t seem OTT as I don’t see any real impact to the game by doing so.

In that Mike Selvey article he says the England team practice bouncers with a helmet stuck on a post in the nets

Yes.

The second is most definitely aimed at the head (the England pace bowlers actually practise bowling at the badge on a helmet on a pole), not with the specific intention of hitting it, but to induce the top-edged pull: once the ball gets above shoulder high the shot becomes largely uncontrollable and certainly all but impossible to hit along the ground.

I would hazard that when the batsman have a net session, they practice defending or avoiding bouncers.

This event is very sad, but everyone knows the score. It’s a game played with a hard ball that travels around at speed, sometimes it is going to go wrong and someone is not going to get their head out the way, whether they are batting, bowling or fielding, with the thankfully very occasional tragic result.

It’s easy for me to say, as I have not lost a family member to a cricket accident (through my brother did have his teeth rearranged by a hockey ball), but I am sure that cricketers will carry on as they always have.

As a cricketer and a cycling I can tell you the “ban bouncers” argument is being received with the same way by the cricket community as the “make helmets compulsory” argument is by the cycling community. I.e. not very well at all.

More than one cricket commentator has speculated that helmets are causing risk compensation – i.e players hooking the short ball, when previously they would’ve ducked out of the way. Sound familiar?

I put on my Giro Atmos helmet this morning and was starkily aware of how little coverage it has around behind the ears/base of skull etc compared to my IXS helmet. Yes different applications but I feel soo much happier road/off road wearing that helmet. Considering you can knock trail features or road at that point of the head- well.

It’s intentionally intimidatory

How can it be intimidatory without the threat of harm?

I would say cricket is safer now than it was, when I was a kid there where no helmets and they where quite rarely worn even at high level. As for more aggressive, not sure about that either, we just have more tv pictures etc. When I was at Uni there where no rules on bouncers, Syd Lawrence bowled 5 in an over once after one of our batters hit his first ball for a 2 (ie off the square) !

Your far more likely to get injured in a low level game played on a dodgy wicket where the ball can jump up and hit you or when fielding close to a bowler who’s erratic and can’t pitch it in the right place – been there done that on both counts.

It’s intentionally intimidatory

It is but they can only bowl so many and less to the lower order batsmen I believe?

Interesting:

Law 42.6(a) includes: “The bowling of fast short pitched balls is dangerous and unfair if the umpire at the bowler’s end considers that by their repetition and taking into account their length, height and direction they are likely to inflict physical injury on the striker”.[3]

The occasional short-pitched ball aimed at the batsman (a bouncer) has never been illegal and is still in widespread use as a tactic.

Firstly condolences to his friends and family. A terrible thing to happen to any sportsman – amateur or professional.

I have to disagree with some in this thread though – cricket isn’t a dangerous sport. Yes, it is a sport with risks but the majority of those are already mitigated by helmet use.

Right now we don’t know whether it’s a freak accident or indicative of the very start of a trend

Given the sheer number of cricket matches played, you’d have to say it was a freak accident. To suggest it could be the start of a new trend is probably stretching things a fair bit. Has the game changed that much in recent years?

But I’m sure professional cricketers who actually face this kind of danger week in week out will discuss it sensibly and make any necessary changes to the sport. Maybe the helmet designers could maybe learn something from it too?

I had a genuine empty lurch in my stomach when I heard the news this morning. It didn’t help that the radio alarm clock was set for 7am and it was this news that woke me up 🙁

To try to make sense of this is a natural reaction, but it can’t really be made sense of. Twenty two blokes were playing a game in which they all knew there was an outside chance of getting hurt, breaking a bone etc. Follow that to its logical conclusion and there is probably a one in a hundred million chance you will die as a result of being hit whilst batting. Phil Hughes and Sean Abbott have been monumentally unlucky. It is a horrible tragedy that is just the result of a bewildering array of slim probabilities coinciding. Everyone talks about Phil Hughes love for the game and that is what you have to remember. Cricket needs to rally around the bowler. I don’t care what anyone says, no one would ever want to seriously injure or kill someone else by bowling a bouncer at them. They might glare, they might even say “I’m gonna knock your block off”, but this is just talk. The guy will need some serious help. He will have to deal with this every day for the rest of his life, and he has done nothing wrong.

RIP Phil Hughes. We never saw the best of your batting in the Ashes, but I watched some of that 2009 series in South Africa (we were over there at the time) and you looked a world beater. A top ten ranking test batsman at least. It is difficult to believe that you were only twenty then, and only twenty five when you died.

I’m not even a cricket fan but my work pal is & he told me. I’d never even heard of Phil till this happened & It’s a very sad day when any sportsperson dies doing their stuff. RIP Phil

My sport is ice hockey & when I watch those NHL guys being shot at by ‘rubber biscuits’ doing 110mph I wonder how there’s not more serious injuries.

My heart sank when I heard the news. Thoughts for his family and Sean Abbot, who at only 22 will have this haunting him for the rest of his life.

My sport is ice hockey & when I watch those NHL guys being shot at by ‘rubber biscuits’ doing 110mph I wonder how there’s not more serious injuries.

Almost everyone on here rides bikes, both offroad and on. I think we all feel the same.

🙁

I always thought that bouncers a bit like bodyline bowling were just to bash the batsman up give him some bruises and make it easier to get him out by intimidation

#putoutyourbat

Strangely beautiful and moving tribute.

As in the previously linked article, there are two trends in cricket that I think most would agree on – balls are being bowled faster and the game is being played more aggressively.

If you’re referring to the Guardian article, I’m not agreeing. I don’t think that the bowling is any faster nowadays than it was in the 70’s of Lillee and Thomson; the express quartets of the Windies in the 80’s; Wasim and Wacker in the 90’s….. there have always been express pace bowlers and I think we’re getting close to the limits of biomechanics that mean we can’t get substantially faster. More aggressive – maybe but i read one point of the article as being that batting is more aggressive; the advent of better protective equipment, particularly body and headwear, means that being hit nowadays isn’t as painful as it was 30 years ago. And as a result batters don’t need to avoid being hit in the same way. Second the advent of 20:20 where every ball has to be hit. Even the bouncer. Add the two and batters become attuned to taking the short ball on far more than they ever did. I think the onus is on batters to rethink whether that’s a sensible tactic, and maybe in the 20:20 where the name of the game is to avoid dot balls, maybe a rethink on allowing it just purely to avoid it being used as a defensive ‘unhittable’ ball is valid.

I think more can be done with protective headgear, this (freak) accident shows that it needs to be looked at. Maybe flexible kevlar type neck pieces akin to a foreign legion kepi might be enough? I’m sure in the labs of the cricket equipment manufacturers it’s being looked into as we speak.

But this dreadful accident must not mean that fast short pitched bowling gets banned. It’s part of the game, and i do understand the difficulty in rationalising that threatening harm without wanting to actually cause it is an odd concept, and one I can’t explain but if you’ve played the game at any sort of level, you just get it.

I don’t know if the Test will go ahead as planned next week, haven’t read on it recently. I hope it does, with appropriate commemoration made, I don’t think Philip Hughes would expect anything else.

And yes, I hope that whoever’s batting and whoever’s bowling….. someone gets stuck in quickly and gets the batsman tucked up with a bit of ‘chin music’. Only by doing so can we move on and accept this is a dreadful anomaly.

I don’t think Philip Hughes would expect anything else.

From the little I have read about the man in the past two days, I agree.

I always thought that bouncers a bit like bodyline bowling were just to bash the batsman up give him some bruises and make it easier to get him out by intimidation

Yes to an extent. More important is that to bat aggressively, IN GENERAL a batter will try to play shots with their weight moving forward and with free swings of the bat. It’s a lot harder to come forward at a bowler when you know he can get the ball around your chest or head; you need to stay back, and either stand tall to get above the bounce of the ball with your hands and bat high, or be ready to duck or sway out of the way. Knowing he’s got that weapon already makes it far harder to just be able to keep coming forward – even if he rarely bowls it – because it might be this next ball that he bowls it.

Hitting the batter is never the intention. The threat of being hit is the weapon.

I always thought that bouncers a bit like bodyline bowling were just to bash the batsman up give him some bruises and make it easier to get him out by intimidation

Then you thought wrong. As I posted earlier, it can be a wicket taking ball in its own right. I remember Glenn McGrath setting up Mike Atherton years ago. Atherton was known to have a bad back and was noticeably playing the hook rather than ducking and weaving. McGrath bowled a bouncer right at him, no bother, helped on its way to the long leg boundary. Then he bowled one slightly higher, more over off stump, uncontrolled top edge hook straight to the fielder at deep backward square.

More often than not it is used to keep a batsman ‘honest’. If you are a bowler who moves the ball around laterally you don’t want a batsman to be confidently coming forward to smoother the movement before you have released the ball. A good stride also reduces the chances of LBW, so digging one in means you can extract maximum advantage from your ability to move the ball.

Sometimes it is used to ‘change things up’ a bit. Andrew Flintoff was a good exponent of this. He’d be thrown an oldish ball, set a short-ball field and then dig ball after ball in at the ribs and throat. It can change the tempo of a passage of play, as well as pushing a batsman back in the crease to bowl a quick Yorker.

None of this is anything more than just playing the game. I’ve seen plenty of ‘big men’ go to pieces and back away from quick bowling, I’ve also seen plenty of callow looking young lads stand up to quick bowling and look completely comfortable.

The single most dangerous thing I can think of when batting is a pitch with variable bounce, then you are in dangerous territory. If you have to wait for a short ball to pitch before you know If it going to fly or stay low, you lose a lot of time. Or you take a chance and might duck into one.

Anyway, none of this is strictly relevant. I haven’t seen the passage of play, but it just looks like the bowler put in a bouncer for a bit of variety, it was on the mark, over the top of off stump and seemed to bounce a bit more than it should (a tennis ball type bounce). Phil Hughes just missed it, was through the shot a fraction early and got hit in exactly the wrong spot. It is the kind of thing you see quite often, although a clang on the helmet is more usual. And that was that. No goodbyes, no nothing, and that’s the frightening thing. Any one of us could fall off of our bikes and hit our heads just wrong (despite wearing a helmet). We could also die in a car crash which isn’t our fault, or trip going down some stairs. But the thing is, most of us don’t die doing what we do every day. He did, and it is tragic, but it is not a fundamental problem with the game.

I hope Sean Abbott is getting some help, he’ll probably just be numb at the moment, but he is going to need help to come to terms with this.

dannyh’s answer’s better than mine! Let’s settle on there being many reasons why you don’t want a batter just plodding forward ball after ball 😉

#putoutyourbats

Mine’s in the loft and sadly, it’s a bare bat apart from a sticker on the back. I destickered it out of superstition, and then added one in commemoration of a young lad that used to play for my old club and lost his life in a car accident.

With Phil opening and Ben at first wicket down, the bowlers in the afterlife cricket league had better be ready, because they’ll be coming hard at you.

Phil Hughes was another off the tough Aussie Nugget production line. He would have relished the battle with the opening bowler, enjoyed it even. As odd as it seems to those outside the top levels of the sport but that is what opening the batting is about. Getting past the fear, working out first how to survive then how to score and finally retribution, how to dominate the bowler when he is worn out and all his ammo gone from thunderbolts to pop guns!

He was a really tough cricketer who worked hard at his game, loved the game, lived for the game. Sadly he’s been taken from the game and the game is poorer for it.

However we must not let this shock and perhaps freaky accident take anything else from the game. Maybe it can add to the game in the form of increased protection, but to outlaw short pitched bowling because of this isolated incident cannot be allowed.

I’m sure he would have not wanted that to happen, to take away the thrill of the first day, the tension of fast bowler with the new ball and new pitch, the thought that if he could still be there at tea, the bowler tiring, the chance to make another hundred, to get on an honours board to turn the 63 not out into 3 figures….

An incredibly sad day for all sport, I hope it never happens again in any sport. My thoughts have been with those close to him today and to Sean Abbott. I hope he gets through this and the world of cricket looks after him and ensures he stays in to the game.

With Phil opening and Ben at first wicket down, the bowlers in the afterlife cricket league had better be ready, because they’ll be coming hard at you.

Now, where’s that *Like* button?

Of course, this chap might be opening….

Many years ago, while he was playing at Hampshire, I opened my car door and bumped the adjacent car door, as the owner had opened at the same time. I got out, expecting an argument, saw the driver. It was Marshall. I was struck dumb with awe at meeting him.

He was a truly, wonderfully, lovely gentleman. A credit to his sport and country. And he bowled some scary rip snorting bouncers that would tear you apart.

Hitting the batter is never the intention. The threat of being hit is the weapon.

Quite.

He was my first experience of the first class game. As a callow youth I was allowed to get the train down to Southampton to see Hants vs Leics, to watch my hero DI Gower.

My abiding memory from square of the wicket was of Maco bustling in, his arm coming over, a languid stride and swing of the bat, and the first time you saw the ball was halfway to the cover boundary as the fielder jogged after another 4.

Hitting the batter is never the intention. The threat of being hit is the weapon.

Only just leaned that it’s ok to bowl a 40mph cricket ball at someones face… I don’t know much about cricket to be fair, but it sounds a bit… not on?

Fast bowling is more like mid 80s-90s mph, and think Brett Lee broke the 100mph barrier?

Only just leaned that it’s ok to bowl a 40mph cricket ball at someones face… I don’t know much about cricket to be fair, but it sounds a bit… not on?

A full-toss bowled above waist height is illegal, regardless of its speed.

Our Tribute. RIP buddy

Really excellent news this morning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/30371699

I’ve been very impressed, I have to say by the Aussie’s no nonsense approach to this. From the top of Cricket Australia to the family themselves, it’s been a case of well it happened, it’s deeply sad, but after a pause for reflection life has to go on. Even down to the memorial service thing being cancelled at the request of the family because the funeral had been tribute enough.

Well played, fellas.

And now well played to the team, for a 40 something run win over India, ive just watched the last half hour of a fabulous test match.

Good interview with David Warner too….. India had two men in on 99, well set, and as he said, they could have folded and played the emotion card. But Australia don’t do that.