We’ve been here before – but not – because the Ageas Bowl was empty

Vithushan Ehantharajah20-Jul-20231:51

McGlashan: England’s Bazball finally hurts Australia

As sport continued through the Covid-19 pandemic, a quirk that emerged throughout was how much more attacking teams and players were behind closed doors. The lack of a crowd meant the pressure was a little less, the nerves a lot more manageable, and thus the barriers to accessing peak performance significantly reduced.The 2020-21 Premier League season was the first in any division in the top four tiers of English football history to see more away wins (153) than home wins (144) as teams felt more at ease in previously unwelcoming grounds. During the NBA bubble season, overall free throw percentages rose from 77.1 per cent to 80.6. Even Dwight Howard, regarded as one of the most unreliable shooters in the game, saw his free-throw numbers rise significantly from 49.4 per cent to 61.8. And in the 2020 English summer, Zak Crawley, a first-class average of 30.51 with just three centuries in 73 innings behind him, struck a ridiculous 267 against Pakistan at an empty Ageas Bowl.This was a 22-year-old Crawley’s eighth Test, and as with most of that age, experience and a middling domestic red-ball record, he came into the knock as a nebulous concept. Tall, languid, capable of timing the ball so well you could set your watch by his drives on the up. His Kent teammates spoke of a world-beater in the nets. Some of the wisest sages further afield reckoned he was the kind of opener capable of laying waste to opposition attacks. And that August, Shaheen Afridi, Mohammad Abbas and Naseem Shah, found out all about it.Related

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For a bit, anyway. It did not take long for Crawley to return to being a concept. Someone else’s idea of excellence that the rest of us were too dumb to see. A self-driving car of a batter who could change your world, just ignore those false starts and crashes among the 29 caps leading on from that knock and into this fourth Test against Australia. A period which did house two more centuries but, more pertinently, a damning average of 24.34.And while there were flashes of bits here and there, such as the 77 in the second innings at Sydney in the 2021-22 Ashes, each innings beyond that Pakistan knock gave further cause to regard it as an anomaly. If Zak Crawley scores 267 at the Ageas Bowl and no one’s around to see it, does it actually count?However, since the start of last summer, things have been a little different. The change of captain and coach was not just in personnel but in attitude. Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum align on many things, but most important was the need to strip away the bits of being an English Test cricketer that had weighed heavy on so many. Messaging became more positive and selection less about immediate judgement and more about loyalty. As far as scrutiny, there was little inside the walls of the dressing room and anything outside was dismissed out of hand. Ignore the noise, ignore the trolls, ignore your own numbers. Ultimately, bat like no one is watching.Zak Crawley launches another boundary down the ground•Getty ImagesNo player was given as much of all that as Crawley. Indeed there were times it felt the bigger decisions made – dropping Alex Lees at the end of the 2022 summer when he averaged (slightly) better than Crawley; bringing Jonny Bairstow back in as wicketkeeper at the expense of Ben Foakes when someone else could have averaged the 25.86 Crawley did coming into this summer under Stokes – were made for the Kent batter’s benefit. Sure, high ceilings, a streaky player, capable of taking the game away from teams and blah, blah, blah. But when do we see this upside? Having paid out in instalments over the last few weeks, with solid starts and nothing more, when was the jackpot going to hit?Well here, today. Thursday, July 20, to be exact. Day two of this fixture, when England had to best Australia and the weather to keep the Ashes alive and Crawley emerged as this freakish elemental presence. A devastating 189 from 182 deliveries making both factors obsolete and with a kind of other-worldly domination of an Australian attack that we have not seen since Kevin Pietersen first strolled onto the scene.Crawley did it in the way they told us he would; 24 boundaries, most struck with a degree of permanence. Some were scuffed just past his stumps or beyond the grasps of wicketkeeper Alex Carey or those in the slips. He was given out leg before on 20 but saved himself with a review. Reminders of who we knew him to be, and how this could be fleeting.Except it wasn’t. It kept going, on and on and on, laying waste to a vaunted attack, as they said he would. An innings of ludicrous harmony and infectious rhythm that kept the crowd at a peak for the entire last two sessions, as if they were listening to their favourite song on repeat. A song made up entirely of drops and choruses.

“It’s fair to say that under any other coach or captain I probably wouldn’t be playing this series,”Zak Crawley knows how lucky he is

It started, in earnest, once he had reached his half-century from 67 deliveries. He needed just 26 more to move to a fourth Test hundred and in turn, the second-fastest century by an England opener. The first? That belongs to him as well, after an 86-ball effort on the opening day of the first Test in Pakistan back in December.The beginning of that move from 50 to 100 real quick was set off by a slog-swept six. A second – off the same shot – brought up a century stand with Joe Root from 82 deliveries. The third, a KP-esque short-arm pick-up over wide long on off Mitchell Marsh, who dismissed Crawley twice at Headingley, took England into the lead with a statement. This isn’t about you. None of this is about you.It’s worth noting those sixes were Crawley’s first of the Bazball era. For a player encouraged to dominate, he has never been asked to veer from his natural game to do so. Indeed, the only time McCullum has challenged Crawley is when he fell to a sweep against Keshav Maharaj during the first South Africa Test at Lord’s last summer. McCullum’s issue was this was not a shot he has seen Crawley practice.Therefore it was neat to see Crawley move to fifty with a reverse sweep off Travis Head’s off spin, a shot he has dedicated huge amounts of time to in the nets. Yes, he has been cut a lot of slack. But it’s important to note, even if it may not be relevant to your own opinions about Crawley, that he has been desperate not to waste it. He knows just how lucky he is.”It’s fair to say that under any other coach or captain I probably wouldn’t be playing this series,” said Crawley at stumps. “So, to be backed by them gives me a lot of confidence. They’ve always said not to worry about being consistent, just to go out and try to win games for England. It would be really nice if we win this game and I’ve contributed to that but there’s a long way to go.”That England already look like dwarfing Australia’s 317, leading by 67 with Stokes and Harry Brook set at the crease going into day three, is largely down to him. Particularly a second session of 25 overs in which Crawley conducted the mother of all assaults. England scored 178 for 1, at a strike rate of 7.12 an over, heading into tea trailing by 78. And guess who scored 106 of them? Off 82 deliveries, no less.The way he dovetailed with Moeen Ali for 121, then Root for 206, spoke in its own way of Crawley’s feel for the game. The latter of the two stands was when he felt most comfortable; a period after the century was brought up in which he found new levels of liberation.He apologised for any arrogance when stating “it wasn’t actually that easy to score at times”, wary it sounded a lot like a humble brag after you’ve strummed England’s highest individual score in a home Ashes Test since Nasser Hussain doubled up in 1997. Especially as he battered one of the most remarkable pace attacks in the world, making a group of six-foot-plus quicks sending down near-ninety miles of heat his way look too samey.By the end, Pat Cummins looked like a man desperate for the ground to open up and swallow him, though there was no guarantee Crawley wouldn’t hit one hard enough to find him down there.Pat Cummins grimaces as Zak Crawley powers past 150•Getty ImagesCrawley acknowledged that luck was on his side, but it’s worth looking around that for now because he did so. He has developed a knack of ignoring the noise, even if there have been the odd jibes at punters and their opinions on his underperformance heading into this series. On 93, he drove loosely over the slips to oohs, before eliciting aaahs with a stunning cover drive on the up to move to 97.A scuffed shot over cover for two brought up the century, which was not greeted with much beyond a sheepish grin and dollops of relief. Root was quickly on the scene to embrace his partner, before giving him room to further salute a crowded balcony and an Emirates Old Trafford ground with everyone on their feet having been glued to their seats. He batted like none of them were watching, and in doing so gave them one of England’s most dominant days in any Ashes series.It is rare the upside is as good as they say it will be. Rare such investment reaps such spectacular dividends when you need it most.Only a fool would say this is the beginning of something special. Because by all accounts, this kind of special wouldn’t be that if we expected it every time. And fundamentally, yesterday’s Crawley is not today’s Crawley.But today’s Crawley has put England in a commanding position to make it 2-2 in the Ashes and given all who were here memories to carry into tomorrow and beyond.

By some metrics, the young, gifted Pakistan batsman has taken on the greatest fast bowler of this century like nobody ever has

Osman Samiuddin10-Jan-2019If there is a place Pakistani batsmen have, historically, enjoyed less than Australia, it is South Africa. Australia holds the more tortured place in the batting psyche of Pakistan, amplified by traumatic collapses and losses, plus just a longer history of it happening – it’s 46 years, after all, since this.Collectively, however, Pakistan average 21.92 in South Africa. How bad is that? Nearly six-runs-per-wicket-less-than-Australia bad is how bad.Still, if you asked a Pakistani batsman of a certain vintage to draw a boogieman, the picture would be of a 6″5 beanpole with the occasional snarl, mean as heck with runs, hanging around that off stump like a pesky fly around rotting food, his inches drawing out bounce and his fingers and wrist movement off the surface. Glenn McGrath to you and I.McGrath is second on the list of most successful fast bowlers against Pakistan, but he’s basically first given Kapil Dev is top. Kapil was a great fast bowler but nobody – certainly not the numbers – would say he exercised any kind of tyranny over Pakistani batsmen.Not much further down the list sits Dale Steyn who, in his own way and of his own time, has held a not-too-dissimilar meaning to Pakistani batsmen that McGrath did: shorter but quicker, less bounce but more swing, hounding the same edges, more intense and more explosive too.Mohammad Hafeez timed his retirement as sweet as he did some of his drives, but the top five Pakistani batsmen to fall most often to Steyn are all specialists. Only Misbah-ul-Haq can be said to have gained some measure of control over him.ESPNcricinfo LtdAnd the thing about this record is that Pakistan have only once come across Steyn in South Africa at his absolute peak, the last time they toured. That went well.All of which is to bring your attention to Steyn vs Babar Azam, a duel, yes, but, on longer consideration, more a passing (to which we will return). Either way, it’s been compelling because it has wrought such unexpected results so far.Compelling at several layers too. Numbers help give some shape to what has happened, which, in short, is that by some metrics, Steyn has not been dominated by a batsman in the manner Babar has done across two Tests. It is two Tests and three innings, but with a minimum qualification of 50 balls faced, Babar’s strike rate against Steyn is unmatched.

They will go into the final on Saturday as the favourites, having topped the league stage and brushed aside Delhi Bulls

Aadam Patel03-Dec-2021For Mushtaq Ahmed, it is a third season in the hot seat at the Deccan Gladiators and perhaps, it is a case of third time lucky for the former Pakistan spinner. In 2019, the Gladiators fell short at the final hurdle, and earlier this year a tame effort saw them eliminated before the play-offs.This time around, things are a little different. They will go into the Abu Dhabi T10 final on Saturday as the favourites, having topped the league stage and brushed aside Delhi Bulls in the first qualifier.Led by the experienced Wahab Riaz and a bowling attack that possesses international quality in Tymal Mills and Wanindu Hasaranga, they have managed to bowl out three sides and taken 61 wickets across the ten-game league stage. Their West Indian allrounders, Andre Russell and Odean Smith have both picked up regular wickets throughout the tournament, as well as starring with the bat.Hasaranga is the joint top wicket-taker this season with a tally of 19 and has resumed exactly where he left off at the T20 World Cup, baffling the opposition with his variations. In a format that strongly favours the batters, the Sri Lankan has had the chance to bowl five hat-trick deliveries thus far. With 5 for 8 against the Bangla Tigers in the league stage, Hasaranga now also has the best bowling figures in T10 history.With the bat, they have had contributions across the order. At the top, the three Toms in Kohler-Cadmore, Moores and Banton have all played match-winning knocks. Kohler-Cadmore’s 96 has undoubtedly been the knock of the tournament and is also the highest score in T10 history.Going into the final, Mushtaq insists that his message will remain simple to the players.Wanindu Hasaranga has picked up where he left off at the T20 World Cup•ICC via Getty”Remember your strengths first of all. We’re lucky to have a very good analyst [Prasanna Agoram] and he gives the team lots of information on the opposition, in terms of bowling variations and the strengths and weaknesses of batters. That’s why analysts are playing a huge role in cricket,” Mushtaq said. “When you prepare to win a tournament like this, a lot of it is very simple – you have to aim for less dot balls and more boundaries with the bat and vice versa with the ball. In this format, you need a bit of a luck too, but that you can’t control. I tell the boys to make sure they control what they can.”In an interview with Ten Sports, Prasanna spoke about how much he has been impressed by Smith, who he believes “has all the ingredients to succeed” and become “the next Andre Russell.” He added how Kohler-Cadmore was one of the first names he recommended to Mushtaq and that given his wide range of shots, an England debut can’t be far off.Mushtaq certainly appreciates and values the role of the analyst in modern-day cricket, yet as part of a generation that grew and developed without such assistance, he insists that players need to trust their own instincts too.”The analyst helps you to execute plans better, but in my time, we used to use our own brain. I was saying to the guys the other day, we didn’t have an analyst but we used to read the opposition ourselves. If you can feed lots of things into that laptop or computer, you can feed your own programme too if you concentrate on the opposition and that’s why cricketers in the 80s and 90s were very very smart. They could read a batsmen while they were fielding and waiting to bowl.””Now, all of the teams rely on analysts to get information, which is rightly so, but at the same time, sometimes young cricketers don’t rely on their own thinking and their own brain and that’s why sometimes the process of becoming a better cricketer comes later.””In my era, I think we were more street-smart, because we didn’t have those sources. We had to assess the conditions very quickly. Using your own brain allows you to make mistakes and that helps you to learn and improve quicker and I think that’s a big difference between now and when I played.”In Hasaranga, Mushtaq believes that the Gladiators possess one of those street-smart players. “He reads batters so quickly, in terms of who is looking to hit him where and he is very proactive with his variations. I’m very impressed.”The Sri Lankan has been the standout bowler of the Abu Dhabi T10 and if the Gladiators again deploy his weaponry well in the final, his two overs could end up being the difference between another final defeat and a first ever T10 title for the franchise.

Don’t forget, the pair does not comprise the totality of concerns raised by the hearings; to benefit from the process, South African cricket must delve into a lot more

Firdose Moonda12-May-2022South African cricket’s relationship with race does not start or end with Graeme Smith and Mark Boucher. The pair has been in the eye of the storm generated by the Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) report, but Smith was cleared last week and charges against Boucher were dropped less than a week before his disciplinary hearing was to begin. The word “finality” is doing the rounds. Except that the SJN hearings were never about individuals or drawing a line in the sand. And Cricket South Africa (CSA) now has the opportunity to move the discussion away from two, influential figures and onto the game as a whole.It’s easy to see why Smith and Boucher became the epicentre. As director of cricket and national men’s coach, the pair held the two most powerful positions in South African cricket and the manner in which they came to occupy them – in a matter of a few frenzied days in December 2019 – sparked questions of favouritism and fears of a “white takeover”.Related

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But how they came to illustrate the totality of concerns raised by the SJN is another matter. Their names were mentioned on the very first day of testimony, when former board member Dr Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, who conceptualised the SJN, questioned the process of their appointments. Though CSA has acknowledged the flaws which led to positions being filled without advertising or interviews, it also pointed out that those processes were ratified by the previous board and no further action can be taken.Subsequently, Smith and Boucher were named by several people who testified at the hearings. Occasionally, the ombudsman’s assistants asked witnesses whether Smith and Boucher, in particular, were involved in incidents of racial discrimination. But the pair’s prominence only become part of the dominant narrative with the filing of the SJN report, in which ombudsman Dumisa Ntsebeza said he felt they could have engaged in racially discriminatory behaviour. He encouraged CSA to investigate further.Though titled “Interim Report”, it is the only document CSA has received from the ombudsman and because it was unable to make definitive findings it left CSA in an impossible position. The board could not responsibly act on “tentative findings”, but it also could not ignore the report, having thrown its weight behind the process. The only solution was to follow the ombudsman’s advice and embark on a formal process against those named within; and the only processes the board could embark on was against people who worked with CSA. Which is how we come to Smith and Boucher.

The SJN was a flawed report because it was not definitive. It left the door open for only two figures to become the main characters and while their levels of seniority means they may always have been part of the story, they are not the entirety of it

We must remember that Smith and Boucher were not the only people named in the report. AB de Villiers, for example, was one of the most prominent persons to be named, along with a string of former and current players, some of whom supplied written affidavits to the SJN (such as de Villiers) and others who did not. Naming (and shaming, as it were) cannot be the point of an exercise like the SJN because it then loses any chance at real meaning, which involves addressing the macro-issues.The testimony shared at the SJN covered a period from pre-readmission (Omar Henry’s memories of being ostracised by both communities of colour and white is one example) to the present day. But the focus was largely on the national men’s team, from readmission to the mid-2010s. That is a period in which Boucher (in his affidavit) said players were unprepared because CSA did not do enough to equip them with how to deal with “the legacy of Apartheid… the additional pressures placed on them by the country and the media, how we ensure that there is equality, respect, empathy and inclusiveness in the team”.There’s some naivety in Boucher’s statement – which may extend to other players at the time – which suggests they did not assume responsibility for being part of a changing world, and perhaps did not see the need to change with that world. At a professional level, cricket remained a white-dominated sport, even as it began to operate at the intersection of old South Africa and new. In fact, it had more of a foot in the old, simply because more of the people involved were from that side of history and could establish their way of doing things as the norm.For a better understanding, we need to look a little deeper into the dominant sporting culture at the time, which came from the elite schoolboy system of hierarchy. To this day, the top schools in the country operate in this way, where there is bullying, unpleasant rites of initiation and unspoken rules of who can do what and when. Coming through it is a rite of passage for many young people, who are taught to be tough and have to learn that the hard way.The current crop of South Africa players have been through several culture camps•AFP/Getty ImagesThat’s why we get statements like “this is a man’s environment” and “harden up” from current Test captain Dean Elgar. It’s why it was acceptable for South African fans to taunt David Warner with his wife’s intimate history. This is a place where overt displays of masculinity are celebrated and any form of vulnerability is not, and it was even more stark in that immediate post-readmission period.As a young player, and especially a young player of colour, coming into that space was difficult. Challenging it was unthinkable. Neither Paul Adams, nor Boucher would have been able to say if they found the songs at fines meetings inappropriate. No one would have. Interestingly, no one else who played with Adams or Boucher has said anything about their experience. Adams has subsequently realised he was the target of a racial slur; Boucher has since said he understands the seriousness of the offence caused.So the actual question we should we ask is whether anything has changed?Boucher, in his statement on Tuesday, maintains that the team environment is “inclusive”, something which players including white-ball captain Temba Bavuma have confirmed. The current crop of players have been through several culture camps and have established three pillars which they consider the core of their approach: respect, empathy and belonging. In terms of buzz-speak that sounds good.They still hold fines meetings, they still sing songs, and they still use stereotypes in a half-jest, half-mocking way. Is that just part of the bonding exercise all teams go through? Or is it something that needs deeper consideration and more thought, especially in a society like South Africa’s? Those are the questions this current group of players needs to answer as it seeks to move forward, from the old days where Boucher and his ilk were unsure how to deal with each other, to a time when it can embody the idea of unity.The SJN has made us think and talk about this, beyond just cricket’s circles. It gave a voice to the likes of Adams, who said that he had never before had the opportunity to talk about his experience, while providing a platform for those accused to reply. Smith and Boucher chose not to do that in person, instead providing written submissions. That was their right, but it may have robbed the process of a necessary level of humanity, or the opportunity to allow people to understand each other better.At the same time, the SJN was a flawed report because it was not definitive. It left the door open for only two figures to become the main characters and while their levels of seniority means they may always have been part of the story, they are not the entirety of it. Only once we start to confront the offshoots – the issues around development, the women’s game, school structures, support staff concerns and everything in between – will see the full benefit of a process such as the SJN. That was the firestarter; now the flames must catch.

Widespread use of the helmet has saved dozens of lives, but concussions in the game are now more common than before

Tim Wigmore and Stefan Szymanski01-Jun-2022After Phillip Hughes’ death in 2014, Peter Brukner, the Australian team doctor, and Tom Gara, a historian at the South Australian Museum, conducted an analysis, funded by Cricket Australia, of how common fatalities were in the sport. Until then, no national boards had ever compiled numbers on how many players were killed while playing the game, either at amateur or professional level. Gara spent weeks labouring over newspaper archives from Great Britain and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, going back to 1850. Brukner swiftly learned that “deaths were more common than I thought”.The authors identified 544 cricket-related deaths in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain and Ireland: an average of around 3.25 per year. The true figure is likely to be considerably higher: their search only covered three cricketing nations, and the Australian coverage was incomplete. The deaths were split about equally between formal and recreational games.The macabre list of deaths in cricket the researchers compiled included a spectator being killed by a ball hit into the crowd by his son; a fielder killed by the impact of a bat hitting their chest; and a boy killed by standing too close to a teacher demonstrating a shot. But about 80% of the fatalities recorded were caused by the impact of deliveries striking batters above the waist, with a significant majority of these hitting the heart or higher. Gara, a committed club cricketer “expected to find perhaps 20-30 deaths” sustained playing cricket in Australian history. Instead, he found 176. “I am still playing cricket and will continue to do so for as long as I can, but I am much more careful.”

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Batting for Marylebone Cricket Club against the touring West Indians in a first-class match at Lord’s in 1976, England opener Dennis Amiss received a blow on the back of the head from Michael Holding, one of the world’s most ferocious quick bowlers. Despite the blow, Amiss continued to bat. He hit 203 against West Indies in a Test later that summer, defying Holding and underlining his status as one of the finest players of fast bowling in the world.Related

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Yet he retained uncomfortable memories of being hit. After World Series Cricket – the breakaway competition featuring many of the world’s leading players that launched in Australia in 1977 – signed him up, Amiss, who was 34, feared the consequences of suffering another blow.”I knew that I would be facing a lot of Australian and West Indies bowlers who would be delivering the ball at 90mph,” Amiss recounted to the . He reached out to a motorcycle helmet manufacturer in Birmingham and asked him to make an adapted helmet to absorb potential blows, using conventional fibreglass with a polycarbonate visor. “He came up with something lighter than the fibreglass motorcycle helmets around in those days. It had a visor that could withstand a shotgun blast at 10 yards,” he recalled. Initially, the design covered a batter’s ears with unforeseen consequences – “we had a spate of run-outs”. A later model solved the problem by incorporating an equestrian design.In the hyper-violent NFL, it is estimated that about 20-45% of professional players are affected by Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a degenerative brain condition caused by repeated blows to the head•Getty ImagesWhen Amiss arrived in Australia at the end of 1977 with his customised motorcycle helmet, he became the first player to wear a helmet in a professional game. A month into World Series Cricket, the Australian batter David Hookes was struck in the jaw by the Caribbean quick Andy Roberts. He crashed to the ground, dripping blood.It was the moment the helmet went from eccentricity to necessity. As Hookes had surgery – depriving World Series Cricket of one of its most attractive cricketers for the next five weeks – Kerry Packer, WSC’s backer, ordered a batch of Amiss’ helmets to be flown out from Birmingham, hoping that they would help protect his other assets.As word of Hookes’ accident got out, Tony Henson, the owner of Sydney and Surfers Paradise, a company specialising in equestrian caps, sensed a business opportunity. Henson asked a colleague, Arthur Wallace, to arrange a meeting with World Series Cricket representatives, as Gideon Haigh recounts in . Wallace returned from his meeting saying, “It can’t be done, Tony. They want us to make something that can withstand half a house brick at a hundred miles an hour.”But it could be done: helmets could at least deflect blows and lessen their impact. In the months ahead, helmets – most initially without visors to protect players’ faces – became ubiquitous at the top levels of the game, and rapidly spread through cricket’s ecosystem as they became more affordable.What began as an emergency solution to the dangers of facing the quickest bowlers in the world turned into one of the biggest improvements in player safety in sport. “Helmets basically wiped out the most common cause of fatality, which was a blow to the head,” said Brukner. “Since the advent of helmets, I don’t think there’s been a death from a direct blow to the head. Helmets are very good at protecting you from death. The reason people die when they’re hit in the head is that it causes a bleed in the brain, and that’s the thing that kills them – that’s the thing that you’re protected from by a helmet.”Graeme Wood was felled by a Michael Holding bouncer in a 1983 World Cup game and was taken off the field and to hospital unconscious•PA Photos/Getty ImagesResearch conducted by Brukner and Gara shows how much safer helmets have made players. Over the course of the 1970s, there were nine recorded fatalities in Australian cricket – five in organised games and four in informal ones. Over the following 36 years, from 1980 to 2016, there were only ten recorded fatalities, with just five in the 26 years from 1990, when wearing helmets became the norm even at recreational level. And so the growth of helmets ought to be acclaimed as World Series Cricket’s most important legacy – an innovation that has saved dozens of cricketers’ lives since.

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The next catalyst for cricket to take head injuries more seriously was the death of Hughes. StemGuard helmets were developed swiftly after: these have a neck-guard made from foam and plastic that is attached to the helmet.In an Ashes Test at Lord’s in July 2015, eight months after Hughes’ death, the Australian opener Chris Rogers was struck by a short ball from Jimmy Anderson. It hit him behind his right ear and landed on his StemGuard. Rogers was one of the few players then wearing the new protection. Brukner told , “We both said to each other afterwards, if he hadn’t been wearing it, who knows what would have happened?”Yet neck guards are still not compulsory around the world. “It still amazes me that some cricketers don’t wear them,” Brukner says. When Steve Smith was hit on the neck by Jofra Archer in 2019, he was not wearing a StemGuard.Alongside a change in technology, changing the laws of the game can also help to protect players. The introduction of concussion substitutes – first used in Australian domestic cricket in 2016, and in Test cricket in 2019 – may have reduced the number of concussions indirectly. In many cases concussions are thought to be caused not by a single blow but by repeated ones. Concussion substitutes help to destigmatise a player retiring hurt after a head injury, ensuring their teams aren’t penalised. In this way concussion substitutes help to reduce the risk of second impacts after an initial concussion, which could be very serious or even fatal.Australia team doctor Peter Brukner: “The reason people die when they’re hit in the head is that it causes a bleed in the brain – that’s the thing that you’re protected from by a helmet”•CA/Cricket Australia/Getty ImagesYet, with neck guards and concussion substitutions alike, the puzzle is why safety measures that mitigate risk have not been embraced the world over. Domestic competitions in most Test-playing nations still do not allow concussion substitutes.

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While direct fatalities in cricket remain extraordinarily rare – less than the chances of dying in the car on the way to a game, Brukner notes – death is not the only risk associated with suffering a blow to the head. Across American football, football, rugby and a range of other sports, recent years have highlighted the long-term effects of repeated blows to the head. These may be related to “sub-concussive” events: blows to the head that do not directly lead to concussions. Repeated impacts to the head – from heading a football to collisions with opponents in American football or in rugby – can lead to degenerative brain injury.In July 2017, a study examined the brains of 111 deceased NFL players; 110 of them showed signs of a degenerative disease, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head, of the kind that routinely occur in NFL games. About 20-45% of professional American footballers may be affected by CTE during their lifetime, explains Thomas Talavage, a concussion specialist at Purdue University. In 2015, a class-action lawsuit settlement between the NFL and more than 5000 former players provided up to $5 million per retired player for serious medical conditions associated with repeated head trauma. A range of other sports have also faced lawsuits.Cricket has been warned. Just because players are rarely killed by bouncers, there is no guarantee that bouncers will not have catastrophic repercussions for these players later in life. A 2020 study by a group of scientists, including John Orchard, Cricket Australia’s chief medical officer, identified situational factors associated with concussion in cricket based on video analysis of elite Australian men’s and women’s matches. It found that 84% of head impacts occurred to a batter on strike against a pace bowler, with most of the others sustained by close fielders. No deliveries by spinners in the study led to batters sustaining concussion, showing how lower ball speeds reduce risks.The evolving science has shown that, even as the number of deaths has declined, the ultimate danger of head injuries in sport is greater than previously assumed. The trajectory is unmistakable. “Concussions have become much more common in cricket over the last ten or 20 years,” says Brukner. This is not simply the result of increased focus on concussion. “Since the advent of helmets, a lot more people are being hit in the head.”Graham Yallop, seen here in the Barbados Test in 1978, was an early pioneer of the DIY helmet•The Cricketer InternationalThere are myriad theories for the increase in head impacts and concussions. Batting technique against short bowling is said to have deteriorated; the protection offered by helmets – and the extra time it takes to move their heads while wearing them – has been blamed for batters being less adept at ducking. Limited-overs formats are blamed for encouraging batters to hook the ball more compulsively. Helmets also may have liberated bowlers to use the short ball more aggressively. Worldwide, improved strength and conditioning, some believe, has enabled players to bowl up and around 90mph now more frequently than before. And there is simply more cricket played now.

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The experience of Australia suggests that concussions have been systematically underreported. In the men’s professional game, there was on average only one concussion per season recorded in the decade until 2014. Following Hughes’ death, Cricket Australia commissioned a study by La Trobe University, whose findings were published in 2018. They counted 92 head impacts in men’s matches in Australia between 2015 and 2017; 29 of them were diagnosed as concussions. As the authors of the study observed, “The rate of concussion in cricket is higher than previously appreciated.”The La Trobe figures equate to a head impact every 2000 balls and a concussion every 9000 balls in male domestic cricket. These figures suggest more than one head impact per Test match that runs the full five days, and more than one concussion for every four such Tests. Assuming head impacts and concussions were sustained at the same rate in international cricket as the Australian domestic game, we would have expected there to be 39 incidences of concussions from 2015 to 2018 in Test cricket alone, an average of 9.75 a year. Overall, we could expect an average of 16 concussions and 75 head impacts a year throughout all men’s international cricket involving the 12 Full Member nations.BloomsburyMedical officials argue that, per ball bowled, Australian domestic cricket is likely to produce more head impacts and concussions than the average across the world. There are a number of reasons for this: pace bowlers in Australia tend to be faster, spinners deliver a lower share of overs, and the pitches tend to be quicker. As such, they estimate that, per delivery bowled, the number of head impacts and concussions per ball in all first-class cricket is about one-third of the Australian rate. Using this ratio, and the fact there were 1,012,160 deliveries in all first-class cricket in 2019, implies that there were around 169 head impacts and 37 concussions sustained in men’s first-class cricket in 2019.
Brukner does not think that cricket will witness the same prevalence of CTE in retired players as in sports such as American football and rugby, because there are fewer sub-concussive blows to the head in cricket: “We believe that cricketers are therefore not as much at risk of that long-term issue as those other sports.”It will be many decades until it becomes clear what damage, if any, Will Pucovski suffered from his ten concussions. “We really don’t know whether he’s at risk of long-term damage,” said Brukner. “There’s so much we don’t know about concussion.”Crickonomics: The Anatomy of Modern Cricket