David Warner cried uncontrollably in the first nets after Hughes death: Chris Rogers

Former Australian cricketer Chris Rogers in his autobiography, ‘Bucking the Trend’ that released earlier this week has touched a lot of aspects that really affected him while he represented Australia. He has talked about his partnership with opening partner David Warner and what he had to do to make sure things are in best shape.

Along with that, he has also brushed upon his frame of mind and the state of his Australian teammates after the demise of Phil Hughes. One memory he has shared very specifically is about Warner, who was absolutely broken after Hughes’ death and couldn’t hold back his tears when they eventually returned to practice ahead of the next Test against India.

“My memory is often pretty poor and needed a lot of prompting for this book to be written, but I’ll never forget that training session,” Sportskeeda quoted Rogers from his book. “The sight of Davey Warner walking out of his net after three or four slow throw downs from batting coach Michael Di Venuto to drop to his haunches and cry uncontrollably, and a fairly similar experience for Shane Watson, will live with me until the end of my days,”

He has also mentioned that Australian wicketkeeper-batsman Brad Haddin along with a lot of other players in the team were not quite willing to get back and resume cricket soon after the incident but they were left with no choice since Cricket Australia wanted to go ahead with things as scheduled for the sake of the BCCI.

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Another player who was hugely impacted by it was former Australian pacer Mitchell Johnson. The aggressive fast bowler who always liked to test the batsmen with his short deliveries and the bouncers that were always pushed in at fire quick pace but after Hughes’ died having been hit by a bouncer Johnson was actually unable to run in and deliver like he always did.

“Mitchell Johnson, who usually bowled almost as aggressively at his teammates as he did the opposition, could hardly let the ball go. And when he did accidentally bowl a shortish delivery, he was mortified.” He wrote.

“It wasn’t just these three but a significant number of us who were struggling. It was an eerie scene. Cricket had changed,”

He also stated that the Aussie batsmen struggled to face even gentle throw downs and the bowlers too weren’t quite in a state to bowl and stayed cautious of not bowling anything short.

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