I hope he can but I could not fault him if he never wanted to play cricket again. If I was in his shoes I'd find it hard to ever want to bowl in an aggressive fashion again. Just such a freak accident by the sound of it, and he's not to blame at all, but it's gonna be hard.
My heart really aches for what Abbott is going thru right now.
Abbot needs to feel what he is feeling and go through all the emotions in due course. If he rushes himself through the process he will never fully move on from this. I am not saying he should beat himself up either. He just needs to do whatever he needs to do right now and be with whoever he needs to be with.
When I was in Canada we had a young 18 year old that was killed by a bouncer. The guy who did it was a rank medium pacer but everyone said he hit the bat real hard. The medium pacer insisted on playing out the rest of the season because he just wanted everything to be normal. I would have quit immediately but not this guy. Playing on was his way of dealing with it.
The batsman played for North Shore. Their fast bowler said he would never bowl another bouncer at anybody and he was true to his word he never did.
The story doesn't end there. The young man had a twin brother who also played for North Shore and we were scheduled to play them the week after the trajedy.
We had a minutes silence and everyone looked at the surviving twin and felt gutted for him.
I was the opening batsman - and they let him open the bowling to me. He was a kack bowler but he bowled 6 presentable deliveries which I defended, actually the 4th should have gone to the fence but I blocked that too, and then they took him off,
I confess to having mixed emotions towards the medium pacer when we played him two weeks later, I was a young bloke and only 20 so the older hands explained to me his logic and what he was going through.
Rough for all concerned.
I will pray for the bowler as well.
