Felled batsman suffers concussion
Put away pull shot B7
The Bangladesh camp have brushed off a Black Caps bouncer barrage as simple cricketing tactics after captain Mushfiqur Rahim suffered a mild concussion when struck on the helmet.
Mushfiqur ducked into a 135kmh Tim Southee delivery before turning his head and taking the full force to the back of his helmet at the Basin Reserve yesterday.
There was distress in the Bangladeshi camp as Mushfiqur then collapsed to the ground in agony, lying prone on the pitch for nearly 15 minutes as medical staff treated him and ushered him to hospital as a precaution.
As the cricketing world debates what should be done about the dangerous short ball, with memories of Phil Hughes’ death fresh in the memory, Mushfiqur’s moments on the ground had some fearing the worst.
Bangladeshi opener Tamim Iqbal went out to the middle immediately, finding that his captain would be OK, and said the bouncer is just part of the game.
He put it down to bad luck that Mushfiqur was injured, and suggested playing the short ball was something Bangladesh had to improve upon.
‘‘You can’t complain about it, you know,’’ Tamim said. ‘‘That’s their strategy. I have no complaints and I’m sure Mushy has no complaints.
‘‘When they come to Bangladesh, we know that they don’t like playing spin. We’ll bowl spin all day, so that’s what happens.’’
Cricket is always evolving, and one of the areas it has changed over the years is with the short ball.
Once upon a time, bowlers could pepper batsmen with as many short balls as they liked. Bodyline bowling, or the fast leg tactic as it was also called, was devised in the 1930s as a way to combat some of the best batsmen of the time.
Fielding restrictions on the leg side, and then a limit on head high, short pitch bowling were introduced, as ways to protect the batsmen and discourage the tactic.
New Zealand, and Neil Wagner in particular, often push those boundaries by bowling several shoulder high bouncers an over. One over during the match to Shakib Al Hasan saw the Bangladeshi batsman duck the ball all six deliveries.
Black Caps captain Kane Williamson said you never want to see someone hurt, but maintained that short pitch bowling was a valid measure.
‘‘It’s a tactic to get players out,’’ he said. ‘‘It is very unfortunate when you see someone get hurt. It’s obviously a delicate place and both teams were very concerned when it happened.’’
Talking about the laws, Williamson said players have little control over them. He clearly thought it was poor luck which saw so many batsmen struck in the helmet in Wellington.
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Former Black Cap Ewen Chatfield believes Neil Wagner needs to ditch the pull shot or his test career could come to an abrupt end.
Batting at No 10, Wagner was struck in the helmet area three times in the space of 16 balls - one of them drew blood from his chin - on day four of the first test match against Bangladesh in Wellington.
Wagner was bombarded with short-pitched bowling by Bangladesh during his 31 ball innings on Sunday, no doubt payback for the heavy dose of short stuff he dished out earlier in the match.
‘‘With Wagner, he dishes them [bouncers] to everybody so he probably should get them back as much,’’ Chatfield said.
‘‘But he needs to chuck the pull shot away and duck underneath them otherwise his test career could be ended quite suddenly.’’
Chatfield knows all about bouncers, after one from English bowler Peter Lever almost killed him during his test debut in 1975.
The 66-year-old swallowed his tongue and his heart stopped after a short-pitched delivery struck him on the temple.
‘‘It was a shortish ball that I just didn’t pick up and it hit the end of my glove or the top of the handle of the bat and ricocheted into the side of my head,’’ Chatfield said.
‘‘I just went to the side of the wicket and knelt down and then I must have gone out to it. I didn’t wake up until I was on the way to hospital in the ambulance.
‘‘But I swallowed my tongue and if it hadn’t been for English physio Bernard Thomas then it may have been that I wouldn’t be speaking here today.’’
With no medical equipment at the ground, Thomas jumped to the New Zealander’s aid, reviving him after administering CPR.
Chatfield didn’t play again that season, but was back heading the ball the following winter while playing club football.
The following summer, he started batting with a helmet, which he said he would have worn in his debut match if one was available.
He doesn’t believe the incident had much of an impact on his batting, ‘‘which wasn’t that great’’, but admitted memories of it came flooding back when he saw players getting clobbered by bouncers now.
Chatfield didn’t see Bangladesh captain Mushfiqur Rahim get nailed by a Tim Southee bouncer in Wellington yesterday afternoon, but said the death of Australian Phil Hughes during a Sheffield Shield match at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 2014 got him thinking about his neardeath experience almost 40 years earlier.
‘‘I was lucky that it hit me in the temple area,’’ Chatfield said.
‘‘Obviously, with Phillip Hughes, it hit him in the artery at the back of the neck where it stopped the blood to his brain. If I had been hit there it could have been a lot more serious.’’