THERE will be more nerves than usual at both ends of the wicket when the first bouncers of the 2015 season are delivered.

The 2015 county fixtures will be announced this morning after being delayed by 24 hours in the wake of Phillip Hughes’ tragic death.

But players’ emotions will still be raw when the LV County Championship begins on April 12.

It is rare but not uncommon to see players hit on the head or ‘sconned’ in county cricket. Indeed, Simon Jones did just that to Darren Maddy in the last of Hughes’ five games for Hampshire in September 2010.

Two weeks before Hughes’ Hampshire debut, The Ageas Bowl was the setting for a dramatic T20 final that had everything – including a bouncer that hospitalised a West Indies international.

Hampshire captain Dominic Cork’s skiddy ‘bumper’ squeezed between Keiron Pollard’s protective visor and the peak of his helmet on a dramatic night in August 2010. Pollard’s face was not a pretty sight as he was taken to Southampton General.

He suffered concussion and a couple of black eyes. It was as nasty an injury as you could expect to see and is memorable because it is so rare. But there was never any doubt that he would live.

Hampshire and West Indies legends Andy Roberts and Malcolm Marshall caused plenty of damage during the 1970s and 1980s, without killing anyone.

There is a famous picture of the late Peter Sainsbury coming to the aid of a helmetless Ian Botham after he was hit in the face by a Roberts delivery during a Benson & Hedges Cup quarter-final at Taunton in 1974. But despite losing several teeth Botham carried on and guided Somerset to a famous one-wicket win.

A decade later, Marshall gave Andy Lloyd a rude awakening to Test cricket by hospitalising him with a blow to the helmet on debut at Edgbaston. Lloyd never played for England again but he at least lived to tell the tale (he can still dine out on being the only unbeaten Test batsman).

England’s Peter Lever feared his bouncer had killed New Zealand No.11 Ewen Chatfield in 1975, but thankfully it did not. And last year, Stuart Broad had his nose broken by a bouncer from Indian seamer Varun Aaron - before returning to help England win the next Test.

To put Hughes’ misfortune in context he is only the eighth player to die while playing any level of cricket and only the third to do so after being struck on the head while batting.

Darryn Randall suffered the same fate while playing a domestic match in South Africa only 13 months ago, but only three cricketers died from any type of on-field injury in the 20th century and Hughes’ death is unprecedented in professional cricket.

The footage will have sent a chill down the spine of most observers but particularly cricketers for whom taking the field will never quite be the same again.

In Sean Abbott, Hughes was not facing a bowler of express pace but one who delivers the ball at a similar speed to many county seamers.

Which is why the footage will have sent a chill down the spine of every county player.

Batsmen are sure to be a little more circumspect the next time they face a short ball and bowlers will naturally be more reluctant to deliver them, wary of being the next Sean Abbott - a young man who has everyone’s sympathy.