Put yourself in Johnson's boots: does he bowl Shikhar Dhawan a bouncer? As dangerously fast bowlers go, Johnson has a delicate temperament, all last summer's blood-curdling bowling and posturing notwithstanding. Does he have the stomach to bowl a bouncer? Is it about stomach anyway?

And if he does bowl one, and Dhawan only barely jerks his head out of its line, does he follow it up with another? And how would the crowd react? Crowds by definition are irrational, but what would be the more irrational response now, to cheer Johnson or to boo him?

They're absurd questions, really; it's not as if the bouncer has been outlawed overnight. Last summer, there wouldn't even have been a question. But last summer suddenly feels like a long time ago.

Put yourself in Dhawan's shoes. He's never played in Australia before, but knows all about the hostility. Everyone he's met since he set foot in the country has been only too glad to fill him in on it. Now, will Johnson dare to bounce him? And can he trust his eye, footwork and technique to protect him from harm if he does? Last week, it wouldn't even have occurred  to him that he could not. But last week suddenly feels like a long time ago.

Alternatively, Australia bats. Nervously polishing the as-yet unmarked ball in the middle distance is Varun Aaron, a raw talent, an X-factor, one of few Indians ever capable of bowling at more than 140km/h. He knows he can put the wind up even good batsmen. It's in his blood and in his training. It's why he's here.

But will he risk bowling a bouncer at David Warner now? And what if he hits him? His purpose, far from hurting Warner, would be to claim an early moral victory, but what Australian crowd would make that distinction now? Once, a long time ago, an Australian crowd almost rioted in a similar situation. None of this was on his mind as he was whizzing them down in Adelaide last week, but suddenly last week was a long time ago.

And Warner. What is he to think? Can he think? He was a mate of Phillip Hughes, his one-time opening partner. He was on the spot that tragic day at the SCG, he rode with Hughes in the ambulance, he was an ever-present at the hospital. A couple of days previously, he would have been at Hughes' funeral. Might it be that India could promise to bowl nothing but long-hops and he still would not give a stuff for this cricket match?

Ordinarily, Warner would thrive in the Gabba's charged air. At the Gabba last summer, he opened Ashes proceedings by pulling the first ball he faced, Stuart Broad's first of the series, for four, and in the second inning made a century, and between times damned the shaken English and their "scared eyes" when facing Johnson, and relished the daily rise in temperature. Bowling bouncers, facing them, oohing at them; it was all a game then. But this is now.

Warner was Hughes' mate. Half the Test team is from NSW, Hughes' home state. The rest toured with him somewhere or other. Their grief is all-consuming. Their sense of emptiness is total. The question that begs most is: should the Test go ahead?

Well, yes, as long as the thought does not offend the Hughes family, and the players approve, and it is clear that each player can make up his own mind, without prejudice to future selection.

Why? Because it would be the surest way to begin to heal the national heartache. Because lost as the Australian players are without Hughes, they will be more lost without a game to distract them. Because that is also true of fans. Because, sensitively staged, a Test match could act as the country's memorial service to Hughes, and what better? Because it is easy to believe that Hughes would have wanted this match to be proceed; after all, he might have been playing in it.

And because, gut-wrenching and god-awful as this week has been, you are still more likely to die from choking on a pizza, or by a falling branch, or in an American school classroom, than in a cricket match, and that although it might feel disrespectful merely to step onto a cricket field initially, and impossible to know what unwritten rules now apply, and for how long, the sooner that cricketers play cricket, the sooner the cricket universe can be set back on its axis.