Former Australia fast bowler Geoff 'Henry' Lawson has no doubt that cricket would continue to be played with it's trademark aggression, but he has welcomed the fact that bouncers were not bowled in the Test match between New Zealand and Pakistan following Phillip Hughes' passing.
Lawson, the NSW team's fast bowling coach, was at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Tuesday afternoon when Hughes was hit on the head during the Sheffield Shield match against South Australia and said that he, like others who knew the popular 25-year-old, was affected by the tragedy.
Lawson was also aware that a bouncer, the type of ball that hit Hughes, was not bowled on day two of the Test match between New Zealand and Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates. While he described it as a touching gesture, Lawson suggested that the game would return to it's old self, Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Lawson said that that was incredibly touching, the minute's silence from two teams half a world away to honour Hughes. He added that when New Zealander Daniel Vettori bowled that first over, he half expected him to walk off, but they had to get through that day and both sides did.
He said that when someone got out, there was no reaction from the players, adding that it was like, 'yeah, that's a wicket, move on'.
Lawson said that it was a lovely gesture and symbolic not to bowl bouncers, but he is still 100 percent sure that it won't continue in that fashion.
Lawson said that cricket had endured tragedies in the past but on Saturday, when junior cricketers around the nation honoured the memory of Hughes, the former Test opener who would have turned 26 on Sunday, he used some rough calculations to highlight how unfortunate Hughes was.
Lawson said that he vaguely went through some numbers in his mind for how many games of cricket are played every Saturday around Australia and he had a random figure of 10,000, adding that there is about a million balls, maybe more, bowled every Saturday in Australia, there might be 50,000 bouncers bowled every Saturday in Australia.
Lawson said that one does the numbers and the one that caused the death and it is so terrible, adding that one doesn't want a knee-jerk reaction and make rules for exceptions.
Lawson, who took 180 wickets in his 46 Tests, had his jaw broken in 1988 by West Indian Curtly Ambrose, at the time one of the world's most feared fast bowlers, the report added.
