Cricket Australia probes into Phil Hughes death for batsman protection

It has been 2 years since Phil Hughes lost his life to that tragic bouncer from Sean Abbott. However, since his tragic death, the International Cricket Council has moved many a standard to get more protection for the batsmen in the upper neck region, something that has seen helmets of all batsmen replaced.

The coroner, who attended to the deceased Hughes has opened an inquest into the death of the southpaw. Hughes was hit in the neck before he was rushed off to Sydney Hospital where he passed away two days later. The inquisition comes following a recent report from the New South Wales Coroner’s report which stated that Hughes’ death could have been avoided.

The Coroner’s court of new South Wales will be open to hearing new evidence from Sean Abbott, the man who bowled the fateful delivery apart from former Test players Brad Haddin and Doug Bollinger will be expected to provide their testimonies. David Warner, who has taken over from Hughes in the opener’s slot will also be present to provide testimony.

The court will consider evidence on “the nature of the play” during the match, the medical and emergency response to Hughes’s injury as well as on whether protective equipment might have prevented the blow being fatal. David Curtain, a senior lawyer has published an independent report which consists of a 62-page recommendation for the safety of Modern-day batsmen.

Also read – Virender Sehwag congratulates Mohammad Kaif in his own style

The Curtain Report suggested that batsmen must be forced to wear helmets while facing a fast or a medium-paced bowler even if Hughes’ death might not have been avoided with the wearing of protective gear. James Sutherland, the Chief Executive of the Australian Cricket board went on to make a statement regarding the same.

“We never want to see a tragedy like this happen on the cricket field, and to that end, we have the utmost respect for the coronial inquest process that we will need to go through this week,”

Sutherland told reporters outside the court. “We won’t be providing a running commentary dealing with specific issues through the week, but we do hope something good comes from this process.”

Speaking about their testimonies, Doug Bollinger denied that he had ever said he’d kill Phil Hughes on the day he passed away. Bollinger is among those who would testify in front of the Coroner’s Court along with Brad Haddin and David Warner as a witness.

To begin, Bollinger denied ever sledging Hughes saying,  “I’m going to kill you” on the day that Phillip Hughes was struck at the SCG two years ago, saying “I know in my heart I didn’t say that”.

Brad Haddin was the captain of the NSW team on the day. Earlier, Haddin said: “The game was played in a good spirit. It was just a normal game of cricket. It just happened to be that there were two ex-NSW players (Hughes and Cooper) out there. There was nothing different in the game.”

Haddin said the only tactics that had been discussed were changing the field placements.

“I had a discussion (at lunch) with Trevor Bayliss, the coach of NSW at the time. It was a pretty broad discussion,” Haddin said.

“Basically we were talking about needing to slow the scoreboard down. At the time South Australia was scoring pretty freely so the tactic was just to put the fielders out and cut off the boundary options to South Australia.

“I was moving the field. I didn’t have any discussions with the bowlers about what I wanted them to do. From a captain’s point of view I just wanted to cut the boundaries down.”

Also read – Twitter reactions: Ben Stokes expresses his unhappiness over Bangladesh’s behavior