Cricket player in Australia gets clocked by low flying SkyCam

The player is fine following this scary incident.

A scary moment during the Boxing Day test between Australia and South Africa is raising questions about broadcasting standards in the sport. Anrich Nortje of South Africa was in the field when a low-flying SkyCam crashed directly into him.

Fox Sports has apologized for the incident, but questions linger. Most notable: Why the hell was a SkyCam flying so low that it was at head height of a player? Here in the U.S. we’ve seen SkyCam wires hit by high lofting punts, but nothing low enough to strike a player.

Nortje took it all in stride, despite the severe injury the camera could have caused. After the day closed he was simply questioning what allowed this to happen, like the rest of us.

“I think the one thing we’ve spoken about earlier is how low it is and it probably shouldn’t be unless [it needs to be] for certain interviews or something. But I don’t think it should be travelling head height. That’s just my opinion. And then for Marco [Jansen] as well, they must take him into consideration [for his height].”

The camera hit Nortje’s left shoulder and arm, but he was otherwise fine and able to keep playing. An extremely lucky outcome considering how bad this could have been.