In Barbados in 1981, supremely obstinate English opener Geoff Boycott faced, without flinching, reputedly the fastest over ever bowled, delivered by Michael Holding, nicknamed Whispering Death.
But some years later, when a journalist acquaintance told him about squaring up to bowling he could not see in a lowly village green match, Boycott was aghast.
"You shouldn't have been out there," he exclaimed.
Fear is an inherent factor in most sports, at every level and in many forms. There is fear of failure, fear of ridicule, the fear that is mortality and, most primal of all, the fear of being physically hurt, badly.
It is there in all contact sports, in motor sports, in cycling, in horse racing, and as we were graphically reminded on Tuesday, in cricket, a game played not just in armour, but with arms.
In 1988, when protective equipment was more rudimentary and the MCG pitch less true, and messrs Marshall, Ambrose, Walsh and Patterson were terrorising Australia's batsmen, and as each returned to the pavilion nursing his own set of bruises, some as big as dinner plates, reportedly there was in that room absolute silence. It was the sound of fear. It has been heard many times before and since, in many places.
It was probably heard in the English change room in Australia last summer. Distilled to its essence, what Australia thrilled to then was the sight of Mitch Johnson bowling in such a way as to enliven in the minds of the cowering English the possibility that what happened to Phillip Hughes on Tuesday might – just might – befall them. It won Australia the series by whitewash, and because history is written by the winners, its propriety never was discussed.
Rather, there was rejoicing.
"This is naaasty stuff from Johnson," exults Ian Healy as Stuart Broad gloves a catch to the wicketkeeper.
"Oh, that's good heat. Really good heat," says Michael Slater as a bouncer whizzes millimetres over Chris Tremlett's helmet.
Ian Bell arches out of harm's way. "Ooh, it's a beauty, an absolute ripper, that," chortles Mark Taylor.
Joe Root ducks. "It's vicious stuff from Johnson," says Slater. "He'll be in his face again." He was.
This is not to indict the Channel 9 commentators; they were giving voice to and amplifying the national sentiment.
These were from the first Test alone. Then, near the end, there came the infamous moment when Australian captain Michael Clarke warned lippy English tailender Jimmy Anderson: "Get ready for a broken f---ing arm."
So all-enveloping was the mood of menace that at the summer's lowest point, English media pundit Piers Morgan tried to show up his compatriots by facing up to barely retired Australian speedster Brett Lee in the Melbourne nets, and got a tattoo of bruises for his troubles.
Morgan was foolhardy, but Lee, bowling off 18 metres and chasing Morgan into the corners of the net, was even worse; he was a bully. About 2000 watched and cheered, in macabre fashion.
Morgan prided himself on his bravery. If he was more humble, he might have been grateful not to be dead. Today, he might reflect differently on his braggadocio.
In the sporting dialogue, fear mostly is contemplated only in terms of its opposite and antidote, courage. No higher accolade is accorded to a sportsperson than to be called fearless.
But also in this, there is artifice; even the fearless will admit that it is not fearlessness, but fear tamed. North Melbourne's Glenn Archer personified fearless, but was haunted before every game by the spectre of failure, usually to the point of vomiting.
Sportsfolk dwell on courage rather than fear because they are by nature risk-takers, who invite danger in order to overcome it. It makes their failures more poignant, their successes more epic. When a bouncer limit was first proposed, then West Indian captain Richie Richardson protested against it, saying it would circumscribe his favourite scoring shot.
The fear/courage dynamic whets the appetites of spectators, too, for as much as the sports-lover is an aesthete, he or she often is also a ghoul, if they are honest about it.
No more than other sportsmen do cricketers dwell on the mortal element in their sport. If they did, it would paralyse them. Former English captain Michael Vaughan wrote on Wednesday that his abiding fear as a player was of getting out. The Hughes news shook him; it was a reminder of what he chose to forget while playing. He was, like Hughes, only ever a freakish split second away from calamity.
The bowler's position is even more perverse; he calculatedly poses the bodily threat, but if he ever realises it, it mortifies him.
It is a long time since the frighteningly fast Jeff Thomson said he delighted to see "blood on the pitch", and even in that, there was an element of theatre.
From all accounts, Sean Abbott is devastated.
Mercifully, accidents on the Hughes scale are rare, and so all the more shocking. For the most part, techniques, equipment and chance hold up. It was accursed luck that felled Hughes, literally through a chink in his armour. But it made the game and everyone who plays it and watches it suddenly feel more fragile and vulnerable, too. It squeezed through all our mental chinks. The abandonment of three Sheffield Shield games told of the communal shakiness.
In the blueprint, this summer was going to be like last, with Johnson lining the Indians this time up against the wall. Now, and for now, that game does not seem so much of a game. The first bouncer of the new Test summer will be an examination of one Indian batsman's technique and all of sporting Australia's psyche. For commentators, it will be in all senses a tough one to call.
