Kohli blow sends chill through Aussie camp

The question that had remained unresolved, if not altogether unasked, since the tragedy that changed cricket was effectively answered just after midday at a sun-soaked Adelaide Oval.

How would the game, and more specifically those most immediately and intimately affected by the death of Phillip Hughes, react when another batsman was hit by a fast bouncer aimed at his head?

The answer that had been previously tendered in the abstract was that it would depend on the circumstances.

And today's scenario in which India's captain Virat Kohli was struck flush on the forehead by a ruthlessly executed bumper from Mitchell Johnson, Australia's most dangerous fast bowler, revealed much about how the rules of combat might – or might not - have been redrafted.

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Kohli ducks into a bouncer and is struck on the helmet // Getty Images

For the previous two hours of today's extended morning session, Johnson had been waging his own battle against the prevailing conditions, an annoying finger injury and the absence of blessed fortune that had been his companion on the corresponding day at the same venue a year earlier.

Choosing to launch Australia's defence of the 7(dec)-517 they settled on before play began from the Oval's Cathedral End, Johnson initially looked to have found the formula if not the form that had so rattled England's batsmen and roused the local crowd on day three here last summer.

But no sooner had he opened with a maiden than a gusty sou-westerly howled in, toppling the bails from their grooves, lifting hats from their umpires and throwing Johnson from his stride.

The wind was not a factor in Brad Haddin falling agonisingly short, as well as worryingly on his recently dislocated right shoulder, of snaring a stunning reflex catch that darted fast and low from opener Shikhar Dhawan's angled bat.

But having bowled seven deliveries without score or luck,, the sight of 14 runs then flowing from that same bat in the remainder of his second over meant it wasn't only the lazy wind that fuelled Johnson's frustration.

After three overs he was replaced by off-spinner Nathan Lyon, and when he returned to the bowling crease an hour later it was from the opposite end with the wind – by now merely a stiff breeze – pushing from behind his left shoulder.

And it yielded only more frustration.

A stand-an-deliver drive from India's No.3 Cheteshwar Pujara scythed low past the outstretched left finger tips of Mitchell Marsh as he flung himself from third slip in front of Steve Smith at second.

The remainder of that over coughed up a total of 13 runs, so at its completion Johnson was again spelled to the outfield where sticking plaster and medical help was applied to the left index finger he injured during the Test series in the UAE and has clearly inconvenienced him in each outing since.

It's the finger that the reigning International Cricket Council's Player for the Year likes to rip down the side of the ball when there's not much else on offer from the ambient or pitch conditions, and which, in turn, only served to compound his frustration.

So by the time Johnson began his third spell of the day, half an hour before lunch, with Pujara and opener Murali Vijay well set, Johnson had a score to settle and a sore point to prove.

Back at his favoured Cathedral end and with the wind having dropped, Johnson found the rhythm that had previously eluded him and within a couple of deliveries was being clocked above 147kph.

His first bouncer was too quick for Vijay who found insufficient time to defend or retreat and was left with no option but to wear the blow on his left bicep.

The next one came a ball later and was even better directed, although the India opener – by now forewarned – ducked his head out of its line as it skimmed the back of his protective helmet.

The new-found sensitivities that players and fans were thought likely to observe in the wake of recent event were temporarily forgotten as the rhythmic, gladiatorial clapping that had helped lift Johnson to his exalted success a year earlier returned and he once more tore in.

His barrage also delivered a compelling riposte for those who, over the past sombre fortnight, had debated the legitimacy and wisdom of allowing fast, short-pitched bowling to continue unpunished.

On a benign pitch in conditions that offered no help to the quicks, one of the world's most fearsome fast bowlers had been picked off at the rate of more than a run per ball until a couple of well-placed, expertly delivered bumpers suddenly cast doubt in the batsmen's minds.

The dividend arrived at the start of Johnson's next over when, with feet set as if in concrete lest any early movement carry him into the ball's path, Vijay pushed speculatively forward at a delivery angled across him and the breakthrough had been manufactured.

Which brought Kohli to the crease, and the day to its defining moment.

The driving rhythm of hand claps resumed even before Johnson launched his run-up, increased in volume as he hit delivery stride – and stopped without exception the instant the ball smashed into the BCCI logo front and centre of the India skipper's helmet.

In that eerie hush, the Australian players converged on the stunned batsman with an urgency and look of dread on their faces that spoke silent volumes for the heightened fear and awareness they all now bear.

Johnson was among the first to reach Kohli, who after the initial shock and confusion was quick to sum up the prevailing mood and animatedly signal that he was unhurt.

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Siddle (left) and Clarke reassure Johnson // Getty Images

Umpire Marais Erasmus from South Africa urgently signalled 'dead ball' before he joined the concerned throng that had gathered around the visiting captain who by this stage had removed his protective headgear and was examining it for damage.

As he walked along the pitch, gathering his thoughts after the shaken fielders and officials had dispersed, Kohli received a consoling hand on the shoulder from his rival captain Michael Clarke whose stomach must have plummeted faster and lower than most.

Clarke had already made a beeline for Johnson who, after seeing that the blow had achieved the outcome he intended rather than the one he feared, looked a conflicted figure as he walked back to his bowling mark with hands alternately on hips and on head.

Earlier this year, having snapped the right forearm of South African batsman Ryan McLaren just months after he had sent the same opponent to hospital with a ferocious hit above his right ear, Johnson spoke candidly of his uncertainty in such fraught moments.

As McLaren lay dazed and bleeding at the side of the Centurion pitch, Johnson felt the human urge to apologise and lend comfort but wasn't sure how genuine that act could possibly appear given he was the one who had sent him there.

As part of a legitimate plan to unsettle, possibly undo the batsman.

"In the end, I just reached down and patted him before I walked away. I wasn't sure what else I should do," he recalled in a moment of quiet self-reflection.

Asked prior to the start of the current Test, in a vastly different emotional climate, how he would react if a similar scenario played out in Adelaide, Johnson remained at something of a loss.

"I'm not sure," he told a pre-match media conference.

"(It) might be different this time. I haven't hit anyone yet, so I don't know how I'm going to feel."

The looks on the players' anxious faces, the sudden stillness of the crowd, the sense of 'surely not' that hovered for what seemed much longer than the few seconds of real time it took, suggest that everyone is going to feel uneasy, unnerved and understandably vigilant.

But as the day wore on and Kohli moved with graceful defiance towards a century, a plan was deployed to pepper him with short-pitched deliveries with a field purpose-set to catch him in the act of defending his person or trying to advance his score.

The question oft-posed over past weeks might have been answered for now.

But the competitive element that distinguishes a match from a game will necessarily endure.