Nobody can fail to have been shocked and saddened last week by the tragic death of Australian cricketer Phil Hughes who, in a freak accident, lost his life when, during the course of a match, a cricket ball missed his safety helmet and struck him on the head. There will undoubtedly continue to be calls for increased safety measures in cricket and for a ball, bowled at the batsman, commonly referred to as a “bouncer”, to be banned. This is highly unlikely since statistics show that this was a one in a million accident. Fair enough, but what if you happen to be that one in a million?

Put very simply (and cricket is far from being a simple game) the job of the batsman is to score runs and the job of the bowler is to prevent him from so doing usually by bowling his ball on to the wicket, thus removing him from the game. The battle (isn’t it funny how sport is always described in terms of warfare?)between bowler and batsman is at the heart of cricket and their duel (see above)is pivotal to the result of the game. The bowler will use every bit of his power, skill, aggression and guile to beat the batsman and either strike his wicket or force him to make an unwise shot leading to a catch and dismissal.

It is fascinating to watch the bowler’s attempts to deceive the batsman with the ball bowled to the left or to the right, bowled short, bowled long, bowled slow, bowled with spin or bowled fast at speeds around 100mph. Sometimes the bowler will not attempt to hit the wicket at all but will instead bowl deliberately hard and fast at the batsman, not with the intention of inflicting bodily harm (so you would hope) but with the aim of unsettling and intimidating the batsman. It was such a ball that struck Phil Hughes.

There can be no blame attributed to the poor bowler since he was only doing what bowlers in all teams do throughout the cricket world. However, putting aside questions of morality, perhaps a simple question needs to be asked – Is it really necessary to bowl a cricket ball, not at the wicket, but deliberately at the batsman?