Australia should not stop bowling bouncers

In the hours and days after Phillip Hughes was hit at the SCG, one of the most difficult things for any of us who knew him well was to spend time alone thinking about it. Phillip was always one to want to catch up and spend time chatting over a coffee or three, and it was at moments away from family, friends and team-mates that it was hardest to deal with the thought that he was gone.

That's why I was very encouraged to see and hear how Australia's players came together in Adelaide, training hard and sharing a laugh or two along the way as they try to create a team environment geared towards beating India in the first Test. Apart from a day's meetings at the SCG and then Phillip's funeral in Macksville, the team had been dispersed around the country for most of the past two weeks, and getting together has started the healing process for them.

Little things like being addressed by the Adelaide legend "Nugget" Rees at their first training session on Friday help a lot. Anything that can stop the boys thinking about what happened at the SCG. You don't want too many guys sitting in their hotel room by themselves at night or during the day, thinking about the last week and a half. This is especially true for the guys who were right at the coalface when it happened: David Warner, Shane Watson, Brad Haddin and Nathan Lyon. Having someone like Nugget around is great for them.

It is in training too that a lot of the thoughts the players have had will be pushed further to the backs of their minds. They will have spoken along the lines of "let's get back into training the way we always do it", and about the batsmen expecting that Mitchell Johnson and Ryan Harris are going to bowl bouncers in the nets. If I was batting against them I'd want to be bounced, because you're going to get that in the Test. To be well prepared, you need to be confronting what you're going to get in a game.

Australia can't lose sight of the fact that last summer they established a brand of cricket that will be very hard to beat at home. What Michael Clarke, Darren Lehmann and the players put together against England stands as a real blueprint for how they want to play their Test cricket, especially in home conditions. They forged an identity for themselves as a team and the way they wanted to go about playing their cricket. It's important they build on that and continue to play the hard-nosed, aggressive Australian way. We saw what success that brought the team in the Australian summer and also in South Africa, and it will be a very similar XI on Tuesday.

I'd love to see Mitchell Johnson run in and bowl a bouncer first ball of the Test match. I don't want to see anyone get hurt, but the bouncer's part of the fabric of the game, and if they're not playing in the aggressive way they did last summer then they're not actually playing in what I believe is the spirit of Test match cricket. In his speech at the funeral, Michael talked about the spirit of the game and how important it is, and to me that spirit is a really aggressive nature and attitude, a fierce will to win. I hope that comes out at the start of this series in Adelaide.

India certainly won't be taking a backward step. Their bowlers showed on Friday in the tour game against a Cricket Australia XI that they will not be shy about delivering bouncers. One of these from Varun Aaron struck the young batsman Jordan Silk on the helmet. Silk shrugged it off, the game went on and everyone felt a little more at ease. India's young generation of cricketers are generally a bit more abrasive and aggressive than their predecessors, as shown by the confident strut of Virat Kohli. MS Dhoni may yet be fit to play in Adelaide, but Kohli is the young batsman and leader who will be key to their chances of putting an early stamp on the contest.

One element of the series that has changed over the past week is the first Test venue. Australia have always liked starting the Test summer off at the Gabba because of the proud record built there over the years, based largely upon how foreign those bouncy conditions are to opposition teams. That's not going to happen this week in Adelaide, where India are going to have conditions they're most comfortable with anywhere in Australia.

But of course there are plenty of Australians with happy memories of Adelaide, particularly Clarke. His record at the ground is absolutely outstanding, with six hundreds in nine Tests, including two doubles, and an average of 98.38 - last time out against India we put on 386 together. Michael's leadership since Phillip was hit has been truly special, and he seems to have pushed past the hamstring problems that were a talking point in the days before that.

Phillip never got the chance to play a Test match in Adelaide, but after moving there to play for South Australia in 2012 he had grown to love the place - one that's much closer in scale and attitude to Macksville than Sydney could ever be. I can remember talking to him about his new life there during my last summer of Sheffield Shield cricket, and everyone at Adelaide Oval will be sure to have Phillip in mind as they watch Australia try to honour him with the brand of cricket they play best.