Getting geared up

A few recent events have got me thinking about protection again, gotta admit it's mostly sparked off by watching the girls in the Women's Cricket World Cup. A lot of the girls surprise me by not using a helmet when they bat, to the point where while seeing a pretty lady's face is a sight I definitely appreciate, it makes me wince when the pretty lady's face is under a floppy hat instead of guarded behind a helmet grille.

At the same time, wearing too much protection can lead to the injuries it is supposed to prevent. While I was playing cricket, I'd go out to bat with the following around my person :


My helmet's down the bottom there, with grille adjusted so a ball can't go between visor and grille. And that can happen if the helmet isn't set up properly. Standing up you'll see a pair of solid cricketing pads, you'll get a reference in a picture or two for how big they are. Below the knee roll, the vertical lines define where a series of wooden strips provide the basic ball stopping power. There's also a Lot of fabric based padding behind the white front. The pads are held on by velcro straps and you can sprint quite happily in them.

Between the pads is the (second!) most piece of protection and that's the bat. Ball can't hit you if you've whacked it to the boundary :-) Saying that though, my two whacks on the head were down to ricochets from the edge, same story with the near-miss that hit my shoulder. Above the pads are the batting gloves, which is one area where protection is a fine balance against hinderance. You'll see the reinforcement on the right glove (right of pic) and the chunkier thumb guard. If the ball bounces slightly more than expected, then the padding on the gloves is the only thing preventing a broken finger, which is an injury that almost all cricketers will have had.

Hanging on top of the bat is the most important piece of protection :-) Believe me though, it still hurts if you get hit there. Especially for the opposition batter I saw in a game once who misjudged a ball from our fastest bowler. A couple of minutes after being hit, he fished out the remains of his box. And then he recovered the other half of it. OUCH !


Here's me modelling the gear, see how that pad comes up to almost my hip. Good to see my bum doesn't protrude as much as that belly :-) Spot the right thumb on the lower hand, that extra padding is right in the firing line if a ball bounces slightly too much. There's not much can be done though with one that hits the end of the thumb, batting gloves are a compromise between stopping the ball and being able to play.

Some players will also sport arm guards, thigh pads and chest protectors. I tried an arm guard but got rid of it because it was annoying and didn't offer any protection. I have been significantly hit on the arm twice, once on the end of the elbow (bone chip occasionally locks the elbow) and once on my wrist. The blow on the wrist accounted for one of my watches ...

I never wore a thigh pad because it would have restricted my movement too much. To bat well, you need to move your feet to a position that lets you get a platform for steering the ball. I've never been that good with feet movement though - too much power in my legs and not enough subtlety, gives me two left feet when dancing too. I got pinned more than a few times on my thigh but would have been hit more if a thigh pad had made that movement problem worse.

Urg - that piccy is a horrible example of batting craft - with the shot on show, the forearm and bat handle should be describing a straight line. It's not because I've squished myself down a bit to get more in the shot. Here's a better one :


This is before I changed top to an old cricket one and put the pads on. There's a nice high elbow in there as I'm more in a "waiting for bowler to send ball down" stance :-) The position of the hands on the bat is also a lot better, although I appear to open the blade up a bit there. I'm always curious about my technique, mainly because to improve you need to know what your mistakes are so you can correct them. And without an impartial external observer, you can't totally evaluate what you're doing. It's the same with my bowling, I'd love to have seen footage of what my bowling action was like pre-shoulder injury.

Finally, please spare a thought for the family and friends of Natasha Richardson, who was taken from us last night as the result of a head injury sustained while skiing. On hearing the news of Natasha, it brought back to crystal clarity the second time I was hit on the head by a cricket ball, that time may well have seen me carted off to A&E (aka the ER) as it got me in a far less solid place than the first time. Instead, it tinged off the helmet and I was able to continue batting, albeit rather groggily and with a fair bit of nausea.

If someone you know has a head injury, PLEASE please PLEASE keep an eye on them. Head injuries can be a lot more serious than they appear at first. The brain is a very fragile organ and damage can take time to show.

To close, here's the blooper piccy taken as I was getting used to the timer function on my camera ...


Oops ... My defence is that I've never used the timer function on the camera before :-)

PS That white shirt is probably 20 years old and both shirt and owner have seen better days. Surprised it fit around my shoulders let alone my belly !