Flashbacks of the tragic incident of Phillip Hughes being hit on head to lose his life resurfaced in David Warner's mind when Steve Smith went down after a scary blow off a bouncer from Jofra Archer in the Lord's Ashes Test last summer.
Warner recalled the moment Smith was knocked down during an episode of the Amazon prime documentary series "The Test".
The cricket world feared for the worst, holding its collective breath, remembering what happened to Hughes during a Sheffield Shield encounter almost six years back.
“Where he got hit, I just saw the replay, it’s exactly where Hughesy got hit,” Fox Sports quoted Warner telling head coach Justin Langer in the dressing room. “When I saw him go down we were all like ‘not again’, please it can’t happen," he later confessed.
"We were all in shock," now-retired quick Peter Siddle said. “The worst was when he was laying there. That was probably the scariest moment for us all."
Hughes' unfortunate death, the cricket world has since taken greater preventive measures to tackle the affects of concussion, with helmet manufacturers asked to ensure more safety around the neck area and ICC officially deciding to introduce concussion substitutes.
But the young left-hander's passing remains one of the darkest moments in the cricket history.
"We never thought it would happen," teammate Usman Khawaja said in a confessional. “We never thought you could get hit on the head and die from it. That never crossed my mind growing up playing cricket until it actually happened to Hughesy."
Thankfully, Smith was able to recover from the blow to his neck.
"The point where I got hit wasn’t too far from where he did,” the former skipper remembers. "At that point of time the first thing that came to mind was ‘just not fair’. I’m okay. It’s not fair."
Smith was forced to leave the ground as part of the precautionary measure but he comeback after the fall of the next wicket. The great right-hander didn't look comfortable at all and was out soon off Chris Woakes; he was then replaced by Marnus Labuschagne, Test cricket's first concussion substitute, in the second innings and subsequently missed the third Test in Headingley against England.
(Inputs from Fox Sports)
