Should bouncers be banned?

Siddharth Monga in Cricinfo

The current India tour of Australia has already had a bowling allrounder, a lower-order batsman, miss the T20I series because of a concussion. A key bowler is missing three Tests of the series with a broken arm. An opening batsman has missed out on a potential Test debut because of a hit to his head, which gave him his ninth concussion before the age of 22. All three players were hit by accurate, high-pace short-pitched bowling, which takes extreme skill, and some luck, to keep out.

The concussed bowling allrounder is now back. He scored a fifty at the MCG that frustrated the home side, who have been accustomed to rolling India over once they lose five wickets. India's additions from five-down in their last six innings in Test cricket: 64, 43, 48, 40, 48, 21. In Melbourne, the sixth wicket alone added 121 because this bowling allrounder hung around with his captain, one of only five specialist batsmen, a bold selection by the visiting side after 36 all out. 
The fast bowler whose bouncer in the T20I ended up concussing this allrounder goes back to the bouncer plan in the Test. Experts on TV feel he has been too late getting there, that he has not been nasty enough. The allrounder shows he can handle himself, dropping his wrists and head out of the way of a couple of snorters, but he eventually plays a hook and is caught in the deep.

The next few batsmen are much less adept at handling this kind of bowling - the kind of players who have yielded low returns for India batting lower in the order. Bouncer after bouncer follows. One batsman has to call for help after getting hit in the chest. The other is hit twice on the forearm. All told, the bowler bowls 23 consecutive short balls at Nos. 7-9. Welcome to the land of "broken f****** elbows".

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This is Australia. This is the land of tough, "hard but fair" cricket. This is also the place where there was an exemplary inquest into safety standards in cricket after the tragic death of young Phillip Hughes on a cricket field. Hughes was a specialist batsman, it was not a high-pressure Test match, and he was not facing an express bowler. He was hit in the side of the neck by a bouncer, just where the helmet ends.

It was a moment of awakening in cricket; of realisation that we have been extremely lucky, given the number of blows batsmen take, that we have not had too many such grave injuries. That it needn't be an inept tailender, that it needn't be 150kph, that it needn't be particularly nasty at first look, that any of the large number of bouncers we see and enjoy could be fatal for any of the practitioners of this highly skilled sport.

No. 9: the blow in the Sydney tour game was the ninth time Will Pucovski had been concussed playing cricket Getty Images

Imagine the number of concussions we have missed, now that we know how likely a blow to the head from a fast-paced bouncer is likely to cause one. In 2019, in the aftermath of the Steven Smith concussion, Mark Butcher told ESPNcricinfo's podcast Switch Hit how he faced a barrage from Tino Best and Fidel Edwards in 2004, wore one on the head, went off for bad light, didn't tell anyone how he felt, came back and batted with the same compromised helmet on. He is pretty certain he has batted through concussions. "You just batted on as long as you saw straight."

A concussion is a head injury that causes the head and the brain to shake back and forth quickly, not too unlike a pinball. It can make you dizzy, it can disorient you, it can slow your instincts down, its symptoms can show up at the time of impact or five minutes after, or an hour later, or at any time over the next couple of days. Just imagine the number of players who have continued risking what is potentially often a much graver "second impact", which can be caused in part by slowed instincts because of the first impact.

Australia is the land trying hard to normalise going off when you've had a head injury. It led cricket into instituting concussion substitutes. Six years on from Hughes' death, we are in the middle of a series between two highly skilled pace attacks capable of aiming high-speed, accurate short-pitched bowling at the bodies of batsmen.

  

While there is conversation around making cricket safer, the threat for lesser-skilled batsmen is going up: 13% of deliveries from fast bowlers to those batting from Nos. 1 to 7 has been short in this series; for the lesser batsmen, batting from 8 to 11, this number has gone up to a whopping 29%, or roughly two short balls an over. The corresponding numbers in the recently concluded series between New Zealand and West Indies were 9% and 13%, which is still higher than the norm in Test cricket: 6% for batsmen 1 to 7 and 9% for the tail since concussions substitutes were introduced in July 2019.


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Cricket is a weird sport. If you are a tail-end batsman, you often have to go out and let millions watch you do something you are inept at - sometimes hilariously so. And do it against opponents who are almost lethally good at doing what they are doing. The less you like it, the more you get it.

Opposing fast bowlers have stopped looking after each other now, what with protective equipment improving and lower-order batsmen increasingly placing higher prices on their wickets. When you are hit by a bouncer, you know there are former cricketers, some of whom you grew up idolising, waiting to label you soft should you show pain, let alone walk off.

"You just batted on as long as you saw straight:" Mark Butcher gets hit by one from Tino Best Getty Images

When Ravindra Jadeja, the previously mentioned bowling allrounder, took a concussion substitute in the T20I, the predominant conversation was about the need to watch out against the misuse of the concussion substitute. Perhaps because Jadeja batted on for three more balls after he was hit - which was also a sign that not all teams take concussions seriously enough. Not every batsman has a stem guard at the back of his helmet, an appendage that might have saved Hughes' life.

Mark Taylor's response is a good summation of what the pundits thought: "The concussion rules are there to protect players. If they are abused, there's a chance it will go like the runner's rule. The reason runners were outlawed was because it started to be abused. It's up to the players to make sure they use the concussion sub fairly and responsibly. I'm not suggesting that didn't happen last night."

Taylor is a former Test captain, a former ICC cricket committee member, and a current administrator. He is better informed than many. During India's home season in 2019, when Bangladesh's batsmen were hit again and again in less-than-ideal viewing conditions in a hurriedly organised first day-night Test in India, commentators questioned their courage and called the repeated concussion tests ridiculous.


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Mitchell Starc is the bowler whose bouncer resulted in the concussion to Jadeja. He is the one who bowled 23 short balls in a row at India's lower-order batsmen. He has had to deal with criticism from former players for being too soft at various points in his career. He saw his batsmen score just 195 after winning the toss in Melbourne, and was part of the bowling group that was asked once again to bail the team out. India batted extremely well, five catches went down, the pitch was easing out a little, and the deficit was growing. There was a microscope over Starc now.

Umesh Yadav gets out of the way of a Starc bouncer. "You don't hit me, I won't hit you" doesn't apply among fast bowlers anymore Getty Images

Test-match cricket is no ordinary workplace. You have to do whatever is within the laws to get your wickets. Almost everyone is so good at what they do that errors have to be prised out, sometimes forced. Every weakness is preyed upon for whatever small advantage it might yield. It is not far-fetched to imagine Will Pucovski, the previously mentioned repeatedly concussed opening batsman, will be peppered if and when he makes his Test debut. This Indian team has fast bowlers who can give as good as they get, and they have got some from the Australian bowlers.

For over after over, fast bowlers do what their bodies are not biomechanically meant to be doing. You have to find a way to get a wicket. The bouncer is a legitimate ploy to get wickets, to mess with the batsman's footwork, to let them know they can't plonk the front foot down and keep driving or defending them, and even to send a message out to the remaining batsmen. That line between bowling bouncers to get wickets and doing it to hurt can get blurred. If you have an awesome power and no one has a way to tell with certainty that if you are always using it with good intent, there are chances you will end up misusing it once in a while.

It might sound extremely cynical, but if a blow to the head is highly likely to get a concussion substitute in, thus putting a front-line bowler out for at least a week and denying the opposition their ideal XI for the next Test, is it that difficult to imagine a fast bowler trying that extra bouncer before going for the full ball? Test match cricket is no ordinary workplace.


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"I didn't want just that bloke to be scared," Len Pascoe said to me in 2015. "I wanted the guys in the dressing room to be scared too. If you got him scared, that's it. Often when I took wickets, I would get them in batches. One, two, bang. You just hit hard, hit hard."

Pascoe is a man after whom a hospital ward was named in the New South Wales town where he lived. Back then in the 1970s, every Saturday, Bankstown hospital would receive cricket victims in the Thomson-Pascoe ward. (And that despite being told years later by the groundsman at Bankstown that because of Thomson and Pascoe he used to make incredibly flat pitches.)

Sandeep Patil is felled by Len Pascoe in Sydney in 1981 Getty Images

Pascoe was a young fast bowler, son of an immigrant brick carter, who grew up with racial abuse. To him, the man standing in the way of everything he wanted was the one across the 22 yards. He would do anything to get him out, and his captains and batsmen loved using him to do that. He bowled in an era when it was commonplace to hear chants of "Lillee Lillee, kill kill" at cricket rounds. In those days, any discussion around player safety was arguably mostly a ploy to neutralise West Indies, who had by then developed a pace battery that could match if not outdo any pace attack blow for blow.

The injuries Pascoe caused concerned him. Once, a batsman, George Griffith of South Australia, told him in a hospital after a day's play that had he been hit half an inch either side of where he had been, he wouldn't probably have been around to accept the apology. When Pascoe next hit a batsman badly - Sutherland's Glenn Bailey in a grade game, who then vomited blood - his mate Thomson had only recently lost his former flat-mate, 22-year-old Martin Bedkober, felled by a blow to the chest while batting in a Queensland grade match.

The young Pascoe kept doing it despite his discomfort, kept rationalising it to himself, comparing it to the risk a policeman or an army man takes, but when, at 32, he hit Sandeep Patil, a blow that knocked the batsman off his feet, he had had enough. He saw Patil stagger off the field, barely conscious, swaying this way and that despite support from the medical staff. Pascoe told his captain, Ian Chappell, he was walking away. Pascoe said Chappell asked him, "What if he hits you for six? Do you think he feels sorry for you?" That kept Pascoe going for another season but his heart was not in it.

Pascoe never injured another batsman. As a coach now, he teaches young bowlers to use the bouncer responsibly: bowl the first one well over the leg stump, only as a fact-finding mission to see where the feet are going. Bowl to get wickets, not to injure batsmen. It is important to instil fear, but it is equally important to not get addicted to instilling that fear.


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Test cricket in New Zealand is played upside down. As matches progress, the pitches get slower and better to bat on. The best time to bat is the fourth innings. Everywhere else in the world, no matter how green the pitch, you win the toss and bat if no time has been lost to rain before the toss. New Zealand is the only place in the world where you win the toss and bowl first, because dismissals have to be manufactured in the second innings.

Life is nasty, brutish and short when you're facing Neil Wagner Getty Images

These conditions have given rise to a phenom called Neil Wagner. But for Wagner's style of bowling - persistent short balls between the chest and the head of the batsmen - there would be a high rate of draws in New Zealand. Since his debut, Wagner has bowled more short balls and taken more wickets with them than anyone else. He trains like a madman so that he can keep doing it over extremely long spells.

Two days after Starc possibly flirted with the line between bowling bouncers for wickets and bowling them for the hurt, Wagner goes to work on a dead pitch in the face of a stubborn Pakistan resistance to try to draw the Test. Running in on two broken toes, over an 11-over spell, Wagner bowls bouncer after bouncer from varied angles at varied heights and paces, and finally manages to get the wicket of century-maker Fawad Alam with a short ball from round the wicket.

The tail dig in their heels, and we go into the last hour with two wickets still in hand. Wagner figures the batsmen can block if he keeps pitching it up. So he digs it in short, and gets Shaheen Shah Afridi in the head in the 11th over of his spell. Over the next few overs, Afridi is tested repeatedly for a possible concussion.

This Wagner spell is compelling to watch. One man against the conditions, against his own hurting foot, against stubborn batsmen, trying to win his side a Test match in the dying minutes of the final day. The tail, emboldened by the improved protective equipment batsmen get to wear, braving blows to the body, trying to save a Test match. The fast bowler, fitter and stronger than he has ever been, able to sustain hostility and accuracy over longer spells than ever before.

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"The bowling of short-pitched deliveries is dangerous if the bowler's end umpire considers that, taking into consideration the skill of the striker, by their speed, length, height and direction they are likely to inflict physical injury on him/her. The fact that the striker is wearing protective equipment shall be disregarded."

The MCC leaves it to the umpires to decide what is dangerous. In most cases the umpires are professional enough to prevent things from getting bad enough to be visible to those watching from the outside. Often a quiet word when the bowler is walking back to their mark is enough. Yet the times that it does get out of hand, the umpire can call a dangerous delivery a no-ball, followed by a "first and final warning" and suspension from bowling should the bowler repeat the offence. It is near impossible to remember when such a no-ball was called, let alone a suspension.

The one time in recent memory when it did look like it got out of hand was when Brett Lee bowled four straight bouncers at Makhaya Ntini and Nantie Hayward in Adelaide back in 2002. Ntini was hit on the head twice before staggering through for a leg-bye, with Ian Chappell on air observing he was "perhaps a little dazed". After the fourth short ball, which chased Hayward's head as he backed away towards square leg, umpire Simon Taufel had a quiet word, resulting in two full deliveries.

Often under fire from commentators - former players themselves - and fans, umpires can be reluctant to draw any attention to themselves. The common refrain they have to deal with: "They have come to watch us play, not you umpire." Umpires don't want to be seen as overly officious - when it comes to policing player behaviour or in ball management or pitch management or ensuring player safety.

If the umpire steps in in the case of Starc, it will certainly be controversial in this high-profile contest. If he steps in to prevent Wagner from bouncing Afridi, he knows his one quiet word could end up being the difference between a win and a draw for New Zealand. The umpire has to ensure player safety but without compromising the integrity of the contest or attracting vitriol from former players and media. It is an extremely tight rope.

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Those running the sport stand at a crucial crossroads. A lot of sports - especially those played by teams - have their roots in military training or colonisation. They were originally played to keep troops fit and ready for war, to hone a killer instinct for real war by indulging in a phony war; for voyeuristic entertainment; or to discipline the people of a new country so as to control and spread the right messages among the colonised. The war analogies endure but we have come a long way from sport's original purpose. Player safety standards might need to catch up.

Brett Lee to Makhaya Ntini, 2001: welcome to Adelaide Getty Images

One of the reasons bouncers are such a thrilling spectacle is the real danger they carry. At that pace and that height, you can't always control what is happening. To watch an expert batsman try to tame this force through technique, skill, courage and luck is a rush. There has to be a rush involved in bowling or facing them too. But only till someone gets hurt again, especially knowing as we do now what even a moderate-looking impact can do to a player's health. The rush gives way to unease pretty quickly these days.

Any new regulation that aims to limit this damage will be tricky to enforce. The existing regulations, which limit the number of short balls that are head-high (and not, for instance, chest-high) might need to be looked at too. In the last decade there were two recorded instances of club cricketers not surviving blows to the chest.

At first glance, the idea of regulating the use of bouncers seems ridiculous, given how integral the bouncer is to the game of cricket. There must have been a time, too, when the idea of a concussion substitute must have seemed ridiculous. When it must have been okay for players to compromise their safety by carrying on playing with potential brain injuries.

There will have to be a time when it might not be considered ridiculous for player safety to take precedence over the desire to preserve the bouncer. It seems more a matter of when than if. Any decision will involve carefully examining what the sport will end up losing. A length-ball outswinger might not be as effective if the batsman knows he can keep planting his front foot down to cover the movement. We might end up losing out on a whole genre of bowling: Wagnering, if you will. It will make the umpires' job even more difficult, bringing more subjectivity into it as they rule one bouncer dangerous and another passable.

Then again, do we, and the sport, have it in us to wait for another grave injury - or lawsuits in some countries - before we make that move?

Why players are ill equipped to play short bowling these days

Ian Chappell in Cricinfo

Following the tragically unlucky death of Phillip Hughes when he was struck by a short-pitched delivery, Cricket Australia conducted a review into safety in the game.

At the time I asked CA's CEO, James Sutherland, if that review included batting technique. He was unsure but eventually the answer came back that the review didn't include technique.

The ignorance of that decision is now being exposed as batsmen are regularly being hit in the helmet in all forms of the game.

As a result of the review, the knowledge about the damage done to the brain by blows to the head has greatly increased and sensible concussion rules have been put in place. The concussion rules are non-negotiable, and if a batsman is unable to pass the on-field test, he can take no further part in the match.

This is even more reason why batting technique in respect to short-pitched deliveries should be given far greater importance. With just a few runs required for victory in a Test but only one wicket in hand, a game can be lost if a batsman is felled by a bouncer.

The main reason for more batsmen being hit by short-pitched bowling is the advent of helmets and protective equipment, and the increased amount of T20 cricket, which has led to a drastic change in batting technique.

Before helmets, batting technique was more inclined to the back foot, succinctly summed up by former Australia batsman Stan McCabe's edict: "Drive or play back." Now there's an increasing tendency to charge onto the front foot, emboldened by the impression that the chances of injury are severely reduced than in days past. This change in attitude makes it harder to evade short-pitched deliveries, and this is exacerbated if the batsman takes his eyes off the ball.

When talking to young players about playing short-pitched deliveries, I emphasise that it's better to ensure the ball misses the target rather than relying on chance.

If a batsman is in position to move onto the back foot once he senses a short-pitched delivery, he can make sure his head is inside the line of the delivery, thereby ensuring that even if he misses an attempted hook shot, the ball passes by harmlessly. Once a player's head is inside the line of the ball he is far more likely to watch the delivery closely because he knows he has reduced the danger. 

Conversely, if a batsman is trying to hook a ball that is unerringly on a line for his head, he is almost certain to avert his eyes. This is when trouble occurs and it's more likely to happen when the player has prematurely charged onto the front foot. Once the weight is planted firmly on the front foot, it's virtually impossible to get the head inside the line of the ball unless the original path of the delivery placed the head inside the line.

There are players who have no intention of hooking but duck immediately on seeing a short-pitched delivery, and in doing so, take their eyes off the ball. This is inviting trouble, especially if the ball doesn't bounce as high as expected.

Before helmets, fewer players were hit in the head, because they had an interest in avoiding contact: it was going to hurt. Therefore they tended to watch the ball closely to make sure they didn't get hit.

Players who play the hook are rarely hit because it's a difficult shot to play and requires the player to watch the ball closely. The biggest danger for a player who hooks is of a top edge deflecting the ball onto the head.

With the increased emphasis on fast scoring in the modern game, there's a tendency to encourage young players to practise fancy shots like reverse sweeps and scoops. My advice would be to learn the traditional shots first, and, as it could cause injury and the possible loss of a match, ensure you know how to deal with the short-pitched delivery before attempting to practice any fancy shots.

Batting against the bouncer

Ashley Mallett in Cricinfo


Fast bowlers use the short ball as a legitimate weapon to unsettle any batsman. It is a fair and reasonable tactic that has stood the test of time.

On that terrible day at the SCG in November 2014, Phillip Hughes appeared to misjudge the pace of the ball and looked to be through his hook shot before he was struck in the neck, clear of the protective face of the helmet.

It was a shocking, freak accident and, especially for Phil's family and friends, so terrible in its finality.

In the wake of the Hughes' tragedy there has been a disturbing number of quality batsmen being struck on the helmet. The "hit" list is not dominated by mid- to lower-order batsmen. In recent times players of the calibre of Steven Smith, Shane Watson, Michael Clarke, Chris Rogers and Virat Kohli have copped heavy blows to the helmet.

When looking at footage of the incidents, you see all too clearly that all of the players who were hit were not watching the ball and they were struck on the side of the helmet. 

Just a couple of weeks after Hughes' tragic death, Australia played India at the Adelaide Oval. The ground was packed but the silence was deafening the instant Kohli was hit on the helmet from the first ball he faced from Mitchell Johnson.

Kohli, one of the best and most exciting batsmen in the world, was not watching the ball.

If some of the world's best batsmen are taking their eye off the ball, what's happening to batting technique among the young, emerging cricketers?

All parents want their children to be safe, but just sticking a helmet on them is not the only solution here. Youngsters need to learn to watch the ball like a hawk and to play short-pitched bowling.

Junior coaches everywhere must look at what they are doing. Proper technique against short-pitched bowling starts the day the youngster picks up a cricket bat, eager to learn the game. The Chappells were five years old when they did.

Former Test opening batsman Ashley Woodcock coaches juniors and seniors at University Cricket Club in Adelaide. He learnt the rudiments of batting from his older brother Steve.

"Two basic shots are the backward defence and the forward defence," Woodcock said. "With the modern-day forward press, it makes life difficult to get back and across to a short-pitched delivery. In the days before helmets a batsman had no choice. He had to watch the ball."

Long-time South Australian captain Les Favell used to invite a current State player to accompany him on coaching trips to the country areas. He stressed to the youngsters that "all the attacking shots are linked to two basic shots: the forward and back defence."

When a batsman plays back, the movement is back and across. From that position he can cut, pull or hook. Shots developed from the forward defence are the off and the cover drives and shots off the pads.

Among the list of players who accompanied Favell on those trips were Garry Sobers and Barry Richards. Both men had a back-and-across first movement. Those basic movements are important, all done while never taking your eye off the ball.

Against fast bowling a back-and-across first movement allows the batsman to get in behind the line of flight. If the ball is wide he can allow it to pass, but he can hook a short ball that is passing over leg stump if he is back and across his stumps, with his head inside the line of flight. This technique is terrific because even if he makes a mistake and misses the ball, his head is inside the line and out of harm's way.

England's Colin Cowdrey scored centuries against West Indian speedsters Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith in the early 1960s. He likened the challenge of facing a fast bowler to be akin to a boxer moving his feet swiftly, never taking his eyes off his opponent, easily swaying away from danger.

Ian Redpath, a former Australian Test opener, rarely hooked the ball, yet he scored three centuries in 1975-76 against West Indies, whose attack included Andy Roberts and Michael Holding. Redpath's method was make the West Indies bowlers bowl to him. Anything short, shoulder to head high, he swayed out of the way, waiting for a ball of full length to drive for four. 

Last Friday, during the elimination final of the Matador Cup at Drummoyne Oval, New South Wales opening batsman Daniel Hughes was struck on the side of his helmet as he attempted to hook a short ball from Victoria's Peter Siddle. Hughes fell to his knees as concerned fieldsmen rushed to his side. The medical officer at the ground, Dr John Orchard, immediately ordered Hughes to take a concussion test. After undergoing the test, Hughes (retired hurt on 23) was ruled out of taking further part in the match. A "concussion substitute" (Nick Larkin) took his place.

Fellow NSW batsman Nic Maddinson replaced Hughes in the order. He too was struck a blow on the helmet and was assessed under Cricket Australia's new Concussion and Head Trauma Police by medical staff on the ground and allowed to bat on. He played on and belted a match-winning 86.

These incidents further highlight how dangerous the game has become mainly because of poor technique against short-pitched bowling and batsmen taking their eye off the ball.

Former Test captain Ian Chappell was a good hooker and I can't remember him being hit in the head at any stage of his first-class career.

"When you're quickly on to the front foot it's impossible to get inside the line of the delivery to play the shot more safely," he said.

"I can't believe they [Cricket Australia] held a review of safety and it didn't include the technique of playing the short ball."

Bob Simpson, a former Australian Test opener and captain, was adamant that technique against fast bowling generally seemed to be lacking.

"I think the helmet gives a batsman a false sense of security," he said.

Don Bradman reckoned the most important aspect of batting was to watch the ball. Arguably Australia's best batsman since Bradman, Greg Chappell, nowadays Cricket Australia's talent manager, said the bigger issue is that the helmets are now heavier and cause players to stand more upright to manage that weight.

"This puts their weight back on their heels more than the players of the past who were more on the balls of their feet," Greg said. "They find it harder to change position quickly so they are more prone to get hit than a nimble-footed player.

"The fact that they know that they are less likely to get badly hurt, there is not the same incentive to develop a good method to deal with short balls. We didn't have that luxury so we had to get into a better position.

"The two keys to not getting hit are to be on the balls of your feet and to watch the ball."

In relation to coaching youngsters in the art of batting, Greg suggested starting with a soft ball. "Unlike our father [Martin Chappell], I wouldn't recommend using a hard ball from the start.

"Use a soft ball and include short balls early by getting a youngster to hit to areas. What I mean by hitting to areas is to set the session up anywhere but a net. A tennis court is ideal so the kid has a feeling of space around them, but the ball can't go too far. Apart from ensuring that the grip and stance are comfortable, relaxed and efficient, I wouldn't 'teach' the kid anything else."

Greg advocated setting three "scoring zones" - square of the wicket on the off-side, square of the wicket on the leg side and straight back past the bowler.

"If one can cut, pull and drive, one can be a great player. Think Graeme Pollock - those three shots were all he needed. Every other shot is a derivative of those three anyway."

Greg sets up a coaching session by bowling from the net of a tennis court to the youngster batting on the base line. Scoring zones are from the back corner of the net to mid-pitch both sides. He lobs the ball to the batsman and direct them to a target. For example, if the ball is lobbed full and straight, Greg will say, "Okay son, I want you to hit it to the net straight past me".

If a cut shot to the point boundary is required, the ball is lobbed short and wide of the off stump.

"I include balls bouncing up to chest and head height very early so it becomes part of the whole rather than a separate part of the learning," Greg said.

"Most kids quickly work out that if they shift their body to the off side of the short ball they can hit it hard through the leg-side target area. As they get more proficient, I cramp them for room with more speed to see how they cope. If they have a problem, I ask them what they think the solution is rather than 'telling them what to do. It generally works extremely well and the kids progress quickly."

Martin Chappell gave his three boys this advice: "You have a bat in your hand for one reason and one reason only and that is to score runs. Learn to use the bat properly and you will never get hit."

Greg believes good footwork is nothing more than developing the ability to shift one's body from one position to another to free one's arms to hit the ball to the intended target area.

"This is what Bradman did better than the rest of us," he said.

For the sake of the health of our international and emerging batsmen, let's hope the administrators take heed of the sound advice from three of Australia's batting legends.

By all means, let's have lighter, stronger batting helmets, but the very first step in safety for batsmen against any bowler is to watch the ball.

The ICC can't afford to take its eye off the ball over this safety issue. Safety for batsmen is a global priority. Batsman getting hit on the head - whether while wearing a helmet or not - are vulnerable to serious injury.

Proper technique when playing the short stuff is paramount and every batting coach from the grassroots to the Test arena needs to take heed.

Cricket should discuss the bouncer more seriously

Jarrod Kimber in Cricinfo


The coroner's inquest into the death of Phillip Hughes should have been an opportunity for cricket to learn from its most public tragedy and ensure that the game was safer from now on. But because of the extreme hurt felt by the Hughes family, and the players feeling like they were on trial, what transpired did not benefit cricket or the family.

There is no doubt that the New South Wales team was trying to bounce Hughes out when he was struck fatally. There is little doubt, with some of the players involved, that harsh words would have been said.

Whether what Dougie Bollinger allegedly said was, "I am going to kill you", to Hughes or not really shouldn't matter. Bollinger is a joke figure, Australian cricket's doofus clown prince, and he is a former team-mate of Hughes'. No one in Australian cricket takes anything he says seriously. And while intent and words matter, what matters most is the ball that ultimately struck Hughes. That is the villain; that was the killer.

Hughes wasn't the last player to be subjected to a barrage of them, and that is what the inquest should have been about: how to make facing a bouncer as safe as we can make it.
There was talk in the immediate aftermath of banning the bouncer. It was an extreme reaction to an extreme situation. It was never truly taken seriously, and as the days turned into weeks after Hughes' death, they got quieter and quieter. Like many things in cricket, once the heat of the moment was gone, there was no intellectual conversation about the bouncer. We just went back to business as usual.

That was the mistake of cricket. Cricket as a business, as a sport, as a thing of love and beauty, has a responsibility to those who play it to take the bouncer conversation seriously.

Bowling is as quick as it has ever been.

Recently I've been involved in two conversations with respected cricket writers telling me bowling isn't any more rapid now than in the previous generations.

One argument was that bowling had always been fast; it had just never been properly measured before. That Fred Spofforth was quick, or Harold Larwood was quick. That explanation doesn't hold up when you think that overarm bowling only became popular in Spofforth's lifetime (even he started playing cricket as an underarm bowler). The original overarm techniques were actually side-arm, much like drunken versions of Lasith Malinga's action. So Spofforth's early tinkerings would have only been so quick.

The Larwood theory plays into the second conversation I had - about the old days, when players were amateur unlike today. These amateurs didn't worry about the next game, about resting themselves, about slowing down, and when their body felt right. They came in and bowled with all the pace they had. Part of the problem with that theory is that Larwood was a professional and played a lot of cricket. So were all the great West Indian bowlers. Many of them were overworked physically by bowling.

But really, the conversation was about the name that comes up every time people talk about fast bowling: Jeff Thomson.

Thommo was quick. Thommo would probably be quick now. And Thommo was so quick now that his balls travel through time and bowl out anyone who suggests bowlers are quicker now.

Whether it be Larwood, Trueman, Hall or Thommo, there is no doubt that bowlers from other eras have bowled quick. How quick, that is for drunken conversations with your uncle.

One man, with an incredible human catapult action, whose muscles seemed perfectly set up to hurl, might be the quickest bowler of all time. But not every bowler was like Thommo.

In the 1979 speed bowling competition, Thommo was 6kph quicker than Michael Holding in second place. That was when Holding was in his prime and Thommo had started to slow down after injuring his shoulder. Thommo's quickest was 147.9kph. He averaged 142.3kph while Holding's fastest ball was slower than that. Thommo was the only bowler clocked at over 145kph (90mph) in that test. The fastest of Len Pascoe, one of those tested, clocked more than 15kph slower than Thommo. Richard Hadlee was slower.

And while the speed gun technology seems to have evolved like fast bowling itself, this is the only guide we have.

So Thommo wasn't like every bowler out there. He towered over the others in this test. And during this same era there were many other bowlers who were playing Test cricket as seamers - Sarfraz Nawaz, who shuffled in like an old man trying to get his shopping done, Max Walker, whose action seemed to strangle his own pace, and Madan Lal, who could have out run the odd delivery in his follow-through. New Zealand had an endless supply of medium-pace.

Those bowlers barely exist anymore. Even bowlers like Tim Southee, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jason Holder are far quicker than them. And all three of those bowlers, at times, have been said to be not quick enough. In fact, Southee and Bhuvneshwar have put on extra pace just to survive. There was a time when you needed to bowl 90mph to be seen to bowl quick. We're now getting to the point where you need to bowl 90mph to get picked.

There might have been faster bowlers in the past, but there has never been a time with more fast bowlers.

Allrounders used to be slow first-change bowlers like Walker. The allrounders who bowl these days are Chris Morris, Ben Stokes, Mitch Marsh, Andre Russell, Tim Bresnan and Sean Abbott. None of these guys are slow. At their top speeds, they are fast-medium. Stokes and Russell are quicker than that.

When the helmet was invented there were probably only a handful of bowlers who could bowl at 90mph. Now there are probably at least 50, and that number will soon be 100.

The true evolution of fast bowling isn't the top speeds. Perhaps Thommo was the quickest, or maybe the fastest was from the Tait, Brett Lee and Akhtar era. But the true test of how much quicker bowling has become is how many people these days can bowl around 90mph.

England can pick from Steven Finn, James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Mark Wood, Liam Plunkett, Ben Stokes, Jake Ball and Chris Woakes as their first-choice seamers. Woakes was seen as too slow when he started. This summer he was clocking over 90mph. And if you're batting in county cricket you could be facing Stuart Meaker, Tony Roland-Jones, Mark Footit, Tymal Mills, Boyd Rankin, Jamie Overton, Matt Coles, Kyle Abbott, Fidel Edwards or Tino Best.

There was a time when Australia scared the cricket world with two proper quick bowlers in Thommo and Lillee. After that, West Indies dominated cricket with four quick bowlers for two generations. Now England regularly take in four bowlers who are around 90mph and it's barely commented on. South Africa could easily do the same. Even India, for years the laughing stock of fast bowling talent, have Umesh Yadav and Varun Aaron bowling very quick. The days of New Zealand's army of military medium is well and truly over.

Even first-class teams often have multiple fast bowlers in their XIs now. When the helmet was invented there were probably only a handful of bowlers who could bowl at 90mph. Now there are probably at least 50, and that number will soon be 100.

That is not even mentioning the left-armers. Until Wasim Akram there had been one left-arm quick bowler with more than 150 Test wickets. Now they are everywhere. And as England and South Africa showed when facing Mitchell Johnson, it's a whole different set of skills needed to try and survive a physical attack from a left-arm bowler at top-end pace.

This is the natural evolution of cricket. Not individual bowlers being express, but many players bowling fast. And like rugby is struggling with the fact that their players are bigger and faster now, cricket's struggle is going to be with the fact there have never been as many bouncers bowled at this pace as there are right now.

That will mean more chances occurring of what happened to Hughes. And that is what the discussion has to be about.

Can we stop the ball going through the grill of the helmet? Is the heart in danger from being hit at 90mph? Are there proper concussion guidelines in place? With batsmen brought up wearing helmets getting hit more often, is CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) going to be a problem in cricket? Are the medical procedures adequate at international and first-class games? Is there a way we can ever protect the throat? And are the new neck protectors going to save a batsman?

These are the questions that scientists, doctors, cricketers, the ICC and helmet manufacturers should be working on together. At the moment, it seems like the helmet makers are trying to catch up, and while they are doing a good job, there is only so much money in selling a cricket helmet. The real money and help should come from within the cricket industry itself.

Perhaps the coroner's inquest was not the perfect place to talk about protecting cricketers as there was so much emotion around it. But we must now have this conversation. Cricket should have had a safety summit to try to make the game safer. The game owes it to Phil Hughes and to every player who picks up a bat.

Batting on bouncy pitches: The secret behind Vijay's success

The Indian opener does not play the horizontal-bat shots, but he has a good record in Australia regardless

Aakash Chopra in Cricinfo

December 31, 2014

 

The best way to play the short ball? Get out of the way © Getty Images

Get lighter bats, bat in the nets against bowling machines or with wet tennis balls on concrete, and practise the horizontal-bat shots. These were a few bits of advice that came my way before I embarked on the tour to Australia in 2003.

We had all heard about how tough it was to bat on the harder, bouncier, faster Australian pitches, and of how important it was to mould one's game for the conditions. Cover drives and flicks off the legs were my lifeblood on Indian pitches, but these shots are useless down under, I was told.

While you cannot undervalue the importance of horizontal-bat shots against Australian fast bowlers in Perth or at the Gabba, it's a fallacy to think that players who don't have an attacking game off the back foot are doomed. M Vijay is a good example of how a solid defensive technique off the back foot, knowledge of where your off stump is, and the ability to transfer weight onto the front foot can do the job just as well, if not better. Vijay has scored over 200 runs against pace in the first two Tests of this series without much square-cutting, hooking or pulling.

Vijay v pace

	Runs	Balls	% of runs	% of balls	Wickets	S/R
Front foot	243	433	89.3	74.8	2	56.12
Back foot	29	146	10.7	25.2	2	19.86

Vijay's head when the bowler releases the ball is in line with the top of the off stump. That gives him a fair judgement of which balls are to be left alone and which are to be played. He has left alone about 34% (the highest percentage for any active international batsman today) of the balls he has faced in Test cricket since 2011. Most of these are deliveries bowled in the channel outside off. If you regularly allow the ball to go through to the wicketkeeper, bowlers will have to come closer to the stumps in search of the elusive outside edge, which works in your favour. Vijay is old-fashioned in the way he leaves a lot of balls alone and then punishes the full balls that are close to him.

In addition to leaving a lot of balls alone outside off, he leaves alone almost everything directed at his head. In his last three overseas series he has left 96% of all bouncers bowled to him, and hasn't played a single pull, hook or uppercut. It's possible to not attempt attacking shots against bouncers while being comfortable against them. If you find yourself in a tangle while leaving the ball, a lot of bouncers will come your way. Vijay is exceptional in being able to stay out of harm's way by ducking or swaying away. It doesn't come as a surprise that he isn't peppered with short-pitched stuff as much as some other Indian batsmen are.

Since Vijay scores a lot of runs off the front foot, you might be inclined to think that he commits himself on to the front foot and so has a long stride forward. That's not the case, and it is exactly why he is successful, for if you commit yourself on the front foot too early and too much, you can't get back in time, and you become suspect against deliveries that are short of a good length and bounce steeply. Vijay has a short front-foot stride but he has acquired the expertise to wait for the ball to come to him and to then transfer his weight a fraction before the ball arrives. A lot of players with short front-foot strides tend to reach out to the ball with their hands, but Vijay doesn't.

The success of this method also largely depends on the length and line most bowlers bowl in international cricket - full and outside off, for that's what the slip cordon is designed for. Not many batsmen get out nicking to the slip cordon off the back foot, even in places like Australia and South Africa, because it's relatively easier to deal with extra bounce and sideways movement when the ball is short, with the extra time you get at the crease. It's the fuller balls that draw you forward and lure you into playing false shots that end up finding the outside edge to the cordon behind. Don't they say that a half-volley in Feroz Shah Kotla is a half-volley in Perth?

When touring Australia or South Africa it's important to have a solid back-foot game, defensive or offensive. It's equally important to remember that you will be getting out mostly off the front foot, so you shouldn't be abandoning your front-foot skills.

The subtle adjustment that one must make is to stand a little taller and have high hands on the bat, so that the ball isn't hitting higher on the bat than it does elsewhere. A lot of players from the subcontinent have low hands and tend to stay lower to deal with the low bounce back home, and that results in not timing the ball well overseas. Vijay has ticked that box too. He stands tall, plays the ball on the rise, and most importantly, plays it close to his body and under his eyes.

Why the bouncer is not essential to cricket

Pranay Sanklecha in Cricinfo

The bouncer: not worth the risk  © Getty Images

Enlarge

The death of Phillip Hughes was also the death of a certain kind of false, if sincere, innocence about the game. We are reminded that cricket balls can kill. So what should we do about bouncers?

The standard answer - unanimous, even, when it comes to the old pros who constitute the majority of those who write and talk about cricket, is: nothing. There is nothing to do. Keep calm and carry on. We must understand that what happened to Hughes was a tragic but freak accident (by the way, as Andy Bull wrote in the Guardian, such tragedies happen more often than we might unthinkingly assume). Be sad because it's a tragedy, but don't let it change anything because it was a freakish one. 

Let one view stand for the rest. This is what Mark Richardson had to say:

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to see people getting seriously hurt and what happened to Phillip Hughes is just awful but what people have to accept is that this was such a freak occurrence and serious injury is still so rare that it does not in any way suggest cricket has a problem with the short ball at all. In fact, if cricket took away the bouncer, then we would have a problem. So let's mourn the loss of Phillip Hughes but not use it to grandstand unnecessarily.

I agree. Let's not grandstand unnecessarily. But let's also realise that this is a difficult question, and to dismiss the view that bouncers ought to be banned is itself unnecessary grandstanding, just from the opposite direction.

Let's first realise that there is a moral question here. When you run in and bowl a bouncer, you are (often, not always) aiming it at the batsman. If you're even halfway quick, you know - or after the death of Hughes you ought to, anyway - that you're doing something that carries a risk of causing death, a much greater risk than most other actions carried out while playing cricket.

It doesn't follow that you ought not to do it, or that you are to blame for doing it. What does follow is that you need a valid justification for doing it, and this is not provided by the trope that the bowler doesn't intend to hurt the batsman. Good for the bowler, but it still doesn't address the question of whether he's morally justified in imposing the risk of a very great harm on the batsman.

Now imposing a risk of a very great harm is not the same as imposing a great risk of harm. For instance, each time you fly, you run a tiny risk of a very great harm, while if you gently lob a pebble at someone from a few metres away, you impose a very big risk of a very small harm.

We seem comfortable with the former. Driving, for example, kills hundreds of thousands of people every year, but we do not believe that it should be banned. Why not? Because of roughly these two reasons: first, we believe that the benefits of the practice of driving outweigh the harm of the tragedies it causes; second, we believe that the risk of causing those harms is to some extent unavoidable. We try to minimise those risks, but we accept that given current technology we cannot eliminate them, and we accept them because of the value to us of being able to drive.

And this has been roughly the argument when it comes to bouncers. People outline its benefits: it's thrilling (which Test cricket needs to stay alive), it maintains the balance between bat and ball, it's a test of courage and thereby reveals character (men from boys and all that), it is part of the tradition of the game.

We can accept all of that, for the sake of the argument. But even after we do, we haven't justified the use of bouncers because there is one crucial difference between the practices of driving and of bowling bouncers.

For the justification of driving, it's crucial that its benefits can't be realised without running the accompanying risks. If they could, there would be absolutely no justification left for running those risks.

The bouncer does indeed create benefits. But it does not seem indispensable to creating them. Tradition is not justification, and even if it were, our traditions are mostly the innovations of an earlier time. Eliminating the bouncer would end a tradition, but it would simply be part of the story of the evolution of cricket, and many other traditions would remain. And if you want thrilling Test cricket and a competitive balance between bat and ball, you can achieve both by the simple expedient of making pitches better.

Eliminating the bouncer would end a tradition, but it would simply be part of the story of the evolution of cricket, and many other traditions would remain

One way of doing this would be, of course, to make pitches bouncier, which would increase the risk of inflicting harm, and this might seem to contradict my argument. To quote Mill, via Kipling, "nay, nay, not so, but far otherwise". First, leaving grass on, and allowing pitches to take spin, both make pitches more competitive without necessarily imparting greater bounce. Second, a bouncy pitch would certainly make it more likely that harm will be inflicted, but it's short-pitched bowling that would make it more likely to inflict great harm. And my argument is in part to do with proportionality. I'm not saying take the risk of harm out of the game, I'm saying (well, I will be shortly) that I can't see a good argument from risk vs benefit for imposing the great risks of bowling bouncers.

Make boundaries bigger while you're at it. As for courage and revealing character, well, there are any number of ways cricket does that without the bouncer. Sacrificing your wicket, playing in an unnatural style, bowling into the wind, your response to defeat and victory and misfortune - all these things reveal character. Facing spin on turning pitches is a test of courage, of confronting the fear of looking stupid. Calling for a crucial catch, standing under a ball that steeples high into the air and on which the fate of the game depends - this requires courage.

Ah, but the bouncer is special, people will say, because it's about physical courage. I agree with the latter but disagree with the former. A game with a hard ball travelling at speed will necessarily test physical courage. A game that requires the kind of unnatural exertion demanded of fast bowlers will necessarily test physical courage. A game that people play with niggling injuries, with broken fingers and torn hamstrings, as with in Michael Clarke's case basically no back - this game will test physical courage.

Some may have the intellectual honesty here to go the extreme position. The bouncer is special, they will say, because it tests - especially now, after the death of Hughes - the fear of death. And this testing creates benefits that nothing else can.

But even this, sadly, isn't true. It is not special in carrying the risk of death. To take the most recent example, think of the Israeli umpire who died because of a shot that ricocheted off the stumps. Simply by virtue of the hard ball, and the speeds at which it can be thrown and struck, cricket will always intrinsically carry the risk of causing death. People can die without bouncers being bowled. So even if you maintain that the fear of death is an essential part of cricket, you don't need bouncers to do it.

The point is not that we must make the game riskless. The only way this could even be attempted to be done is to make the ball soft. This would indeed destroy cricket. The point is that we must aim to reduce unnecessary risks. What are unnecessary risks? Well, a pretty good example is something which is not essential to creating the benefits associated with it, and something which directly increases the risk of deaths on the cricket field.

The bouncer.

I love the bouncer. It's electrifying, both to play and to watch. Atherton v Donald, Morkel v Clarke, Johnson 2.0 (or 3 or 4 or 7.7, new Mitch, moustachioed Mitch) v everyone. Who doesn't want to see that?

But I can't see an argument from the morality of risk that justifies it. I can see one other possibility, an argument from, roughly, the value of self-realisation. But reasons of space mean that will have to be the topic of a separate piece.