Peter Lalor, in The Australian, 13 October 2016, where the title is “Hughes witness puts Bollinger on the back foot”
A last-minute statement by a new witness has contradicted claims by senior cricketers to the NSW Coroner that Phillip Hughes was not sledged or targeted with short-pitched bowling. The tragedy of Hughes’s death was revisited yesterday with bowler Sean Abbott’s moving account of cradling the fallen batsman on the pitch after he’d been struck a fatal blow. But the sideshow that the inquest into the accident has become was also on display when Matthew Day, a former Australian under-19 player and friend of the Hughes family, offered a statement to the NSW Coroner’s Court stating that Doug Bollinger told him he regretted saying on the day the words “I am going to kill you”.
Day’s recollection sets him at odds with the other players, including South Australia’s Tom Cooper, who was a pallbearer with Day at Hughes’s funeral. Day also claimed the NSW bowling coach at the time told him he was upset there were plans to bowl short to Hughes, who was struck and killed by a bouncer.
Doug Bolinger on the field 2016—Pic by Phil Hillyard
Matthew Day at hospital after Phillip Hughes was injured —Pic by John Grainger
