On head/ neck injuries in cricket

This post is inspired by Indian Men’s Test Cricket Captain Shubman Gill, who’s suffered three separate head/ neck injuries in 36 days, as well as my friend Sanchita who asked how can such injuries be reduced when I posted about the Skip’s poor run of luck.

Before we proceed, I understand this post has turned into a bit of a book, so here’s a list of sections as well as what they talk about in a line. Feel free to jump to whichever section you wish to read:

A primer on these injuries: explanations of head/ neck injuries
Concussion vs non-concussive impacts: a discussion on injuries that result in a concussion and those that don’t, and their impacts on athletes.
Feeling all wrong in the head: The psychological impacts of getting hit in the head/ neck/ face.
Cumulative trauma and CTE: More about the cumulative load of multiple head hits over the course of a life.
ICC’s concussion guidelines: self explanatory.
Workload management: a discussion of workload management in cricket and why its an important part of this discussion
A bit about helmet design: about cricket helmets.
The technology cricket isn’t using: available helmet technology we could be using but are choosing not to.
Risk Compensation: Humans take more risks if they have more protection.
So what to do?: My solutions.
In conclusion: …the, you know, conclusion to the post.
Appendix 1: No surprises: ACWR calculations for Gill with lots and lots of assumptions and no actual data
Appendix 2: Comparison table between helmets used in F1, NFL, and international cricket: You know… a tabular comparison between helmets used in F1, NFL, and international cricket.

Now back to Shubman, who was injured in three different ways:

10 October 2025, he collided with West Indies keeper Tevin Imlach.¹ ²
31 October 2025, he was struck on his helmet by a Josh Hazlewood snorter that seemed to ricochet off his bat.³ ⁴ This was also immediately after both teams observed a moment of silence for the death of 17 year old Ben Austin after he was struck in the neck while practicing,⁵ ⁶ and I wonder what effect that had.
15 November 2025, he suffered a neck spasm (?- I don’t know what the actual diagnosis is, this is just what the media is calling this injury) seemingly due to hitting the ball with great force.⁷ ⁸

Gill’s extraordinarily rancid luck has given him a near-complete collection of cricket’s head and neck injury mechanisms—while mercifully leaving him alive and able to walk. With him possibly out of the upcoming second Test in Guwahati, I began wondering: are there ways to prevent these incidents, or at least reduce their impact?

Let’s look at the systemic issues that makes so many cricketers prone to these injuries.

A primer on these injuries
A head and/or neck injury can result in a wide spectrum of medical consequences—ranging from mild, temporary symptoms to life-threatening or permanently disabling outcomes. Here’s a table:

Injury Type	How it May Be Acquired	Possible Consequences
Concussion (Mild TBI)⁹	Direct blow from ball to helmet or head, collision with another player, fall	Headache, dizziness, memory loss, nausea, confusion, balance problems, post-concussion syndrome
Skull Fracture¹⁰	Direct impact from ball, bat, or player collision	Severe pain, swelling, bleeding, loss of consciousness, infection, nerve damage, possible brain bleeding
Intracranial Hemorrhage (brain bleed)¹¹	High-speed ball impact to skull, bat strike, severe collision	Sudden severe headache, loss of consciousness, vomiting, seizures, neurological deficits, possible death
Facial Fractures¹²	Ball impacts below/ around helmet faceguard, collision, ground impact	Broken nose/jaw, facial pain/swelling, difficulty speaking/eating, cosmetic changes, nerve damage
Cervical Spine Strain/ Whiplash¹³ ¹⁴	Diving or falling, abrupt neck rotation, head hitting ground	Neck pain, stiffness, muscle spasm, headaches, sometimes chronic pain
Cervical Vertebra Fracture¹⁵ ¹⁶	Violent fall, high-speed collision, severe ball impact to neck/head	Severe pain, numbness, paralysis, deformity, loss of sensation or movement below injury, spinal surgery
Spinal Cord Injury¹⁷	Major blow/ trauma to neck, severe vertebral fracture, direct ball impact	Partial or complete paralysis, loss of sensation, loss of bladder/bowel control, breathing problems
Vertebral Artery Dissection (a tear in the wall of the vertebral artery in the neck, which can lead to a blood clot that disrupts blood flow to the brain)¹⁸ ¹⁹	Ball impact to neck, rotation injury (rare, catastrophic, eg. Phil Hughes)	Stroke symptoms: weakness, speech difficulty, visual loss; can cause fatal brain bleed (subarachnoid)
Lacerations (tears/ cuts on the skin) & Contusions (a bruise where blood vessels are damaged, causing bleeding under the skin without an open wound)²⁰ ²¹	Ball, bat, or ground strike to head, neck or face	Pain, swelling, bleeding, bruising; can mask deeper fracture or brain injury; risk of infection
Post-Concussion Syndrome²²	Follows concussion; persistent symptoms after head impact	Persistent headaches, fatigue, dizziness, concentration and memory problems, depression, sleep issues
Second Impact Syndrome ²³	Second head blow before healing from concussion	Rapid brain swelling, coma, death (rare, but catastrophic), reason for strict return-to-play protocols
Cumulative/ Repeated Injuries²⁴	Multiple minor head/neck impacts/whiplash or blows over time	Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE): memory loss, mood changes, aggression, depression, dementia
Cognitive/Psychological Effects²⁵	Any traumatic head/neck injury, even mild	Concentration, memory deficits, fear of fast bowling, nightmares, performance decline, depression, anxiety

Concussion vs non-concussive impacts
A study of elite Australian cricketers over 12 seasons recorded 199 traumatic head and neck injury events, with the incidence increasing to 7.3 per 100 players after helmet regulations were introduced in 2016.²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸ Contusions were the most common injury type (41%), with the face being the most frequently injured location (63%), followed by the neck (22%) and skull (15%).²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸ Victorian hospitals alone treated 3,907 head, neck, and facial cricket injuries over a decade, with a notable increase from 367 to 435 cases during the 2014/15 season.²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸ The burden extends beyond elite cricket. Hospital admission data shows an incidence of 1.2 head and neck injuries requiring hospitalization per 1,000 participants across all participation levels.²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸ Males experience significantly higher injury rates (1.3 per 1,000 participants) compared to females (0.4 per 1,000), with the 10-14 age group being the most frequently hospitalized.²⁷

Evidence suggests that batters who suffered helmet strikes without diagnosed concussion experienced significant batting performance decline for up to 3 months, and that performance dropped from +0.24 standard deviations above average to -0.24 below average—a total decline of approximately 0.48 standard deviations, a statistically meaningful performance decline.²⁹³⁰³¹ (DON’T PANIC HERE’S AN ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE WITH MADE UP NUMBERS: This means there might be a reasonable chance, let’s say around 30–40%, that a player who usually averages 50 could instead average something like 42–45 for the next few innings, not because their skill disappeared, but because the non-concussive head impact can affect timing, confidence, decision-making, and overall performance.)

Further, research using computerised cognitive testing on concussed cricketers shows:³⁸

Detection speed (recognising a stimulus) slows by 27 milliseconds
Identification speed (processing what you see) slows by 49 milliseconds
Working memory (holding information while making decisions) slows by 53 milliseconds

No one familiar with cricket needs any explanation about what this means for elite cricketers facing a hard cork ball coming in at 140 kmph: on lucky days it can be the difference between middling the ball or edging to slip. On a bad day it can mean a dead cricketer.

Paradoxically, concussed players showed no significant performance decline, perhaps because they received structured return-to-play protocols, possibly with psychological support.²⁹

This is just more evidence that the sport does not take head/ neck injuries seriously enough: unless it is a concussion, it’s nothing. Compare this to any other physical injury- a sprained ankle receives appropriate treatment, just like a broken one, yet unless there is a proven concussion, it is either seemingly assumed no injury has taken place at all, or it requires no further support. Are we surprised? After all, the box was invented and widely used long before helmets were.³² ³³ Given the documented primate instinct to protect our heads above all else during danger,³⁴ it’s no wonder that when we fail at this, such as when a ball strikes us in the noggin despite our best efforts, the psychological consequences can be severe and lasting.

Feeling all wrong in the head
Following his 2014 facial fracture from Varun Aaron’s bouncer, Broad suffered ongoing nightmares and flashbacks for months, even during sleep deprivation.³⁵ His jaw clicked involuntarily, and he saw balls flying at his face in the middle of the night, a form of post-traumatic stress that affected his batting technique for years afterward.³⁵ His confidence was “knocked big time,” and his post-injury batting statistics show measurable decline, particularly his reluctance to play front-foot drives, as he now camps perpetually on the back foot anticipating short balls.³⁵ ³⁶

Broad’s quality of life went down significantly due to this injury and there’s no knowing if he’ll ever quite be free of this particular demon. Who knows when it might come knocking at his mental doors again? Why does it matter- well, it matters because he’s a person and we don’t want him to be unwell. It also matters because it shows something cricket rarely acknowledges: psychological injuries are also performance injuries.

Cumulative trauma and CTE²⁴
Critically, research increasingly shows it’s not just diagnosed concussions that matter—repeated subconcussive impacts (hits that don’t cause immediate symptoms) carry serious long-term risks. Research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE, a brain disease that is thought to be caused by repeated head injuries) associates with repetitive head impacts over years that trigger neurodegenerative disease. The CDC’s guidance on traumatic brain injury emphasises that repeated head impacts can produce brain changes detectable on neuroimaging even without concussion symptoms. Studies tracking athletes show that the number of years exposed to contact sports—not the number of diagnosed concussions—most strongly predicts brain pathology severity. To really understand what this means, here is what CTE manifests as: progressive memory loss, mood disturbances, aggression, dementia, and in approximately 45% of CTE cases, full dementia develops. Approximately 66% of CTE patients over age 60 develop dementia, and the number of years of exposure to contact sports (not the number of concussions) is significantly associated with severity.

This means every helmet strike suffered matters. Every bouncer that rattles a helmet. Every collision. Every seemingly “minor” blow that is waved off, often enough by the players themselves. These accumulate over years and decades, potentially causing permanent brain changes long before symptoms appear. And let me tell you something macabre: CTE can only be definitively diagnosed post-mortem.³⁷

All this brings us back to Shubman and a very obvious cricketing: rest. Gill has played an almost uninterrupted international schedule, often under immense leadership pressure. Because better rest means better recovery, it’s not difficult to wonder whether Gill’s ICU trip could have been prevented had his workload and injuries been managed better.

Workload management
Sleep restriction has been definitively demonstrated to negatively impact attention and reaction time.³⁹ In cricket, batters and fielders with sleep disturbances or excessive match load develop more muscle strains and are more likely to suffer slips, misfields, or head impacts, while fast bowlers with insufficient rest between spells or days have higher rates of stress fractures, shoulder injuries, and muscle tears.

Research shows that reaction times slow by 26-215 milliseconds (depending on the individual) after concussion injuries. Critically, even athletes cleared for return-to-sport still demonstrate reaction time deficits compared to healthy controls, meaning their brains haven’t fully recovered despite being medically cleared.⁴⁰ ⁴¹ ⁴²

In cricket, unlike many sports, everyone must be batting-ready—even bowlers and lower-order players face 90-mph deliveries with potentially milliseconds to react. When fast bowlers complete bowling spells without adequate recovery, their neuromuscular function is compromised for up to 24 hours (This means their muscles don’t fire as well, coordination is compromised, and they become more prone to awkward movements that cause injuries. Studies using countermovement jump testing (a standard assessment of neuromuscular readiness) show measurable declines lasting a full day after intense bowling.⁴³

But as previously mentioned, exhaustion leads to lower reaction times, because sleep deprivation and cognitive fatigue directly impair neural processing speed:⁴⁴⁴⁵ so, a cricket ball traveling at 90 mph and reaches the batter in approximately 400-500 milliseconds, which is the total available response time to any batter. A 26-millisecond slowdown in reaction time means that the batter now has 5-6% less available time to respond (that is, because sleep deprivation and cognitive fatigue directly impair neural processing speed, a 26-millisecond slowdown in reaction time means the batter has 5–6% less time to respond.).⁴⁶ For a fatigued player this could easily be the difference between playing the ball and getting hit.

Sudden workload spikes add to general fatigue issues. Sports scientists measure this through a metric called Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio (ACWR), and it is used to predict injury risk. It’s calculated in the following way:⁴⁷ ⁴⁸

Acute workload = work done in the past 7 days
Chronic workload = average work over the past 4 weeks
ACWR = acute divided by chronic

Research shows that when ACWR exceeds 1.5 (meaning you’re doing 50% more work this week than your 4-week average), injury risk spikes dramatically. Above 2.0, players face 5-8 times greater injury risk. Professional teams using GPS tracking to monitor ACWR have reduced injury rates significantly—yet this technology remains underutilis

ed, particularly at international level where scheduling pressures often override medical best practices.

ICC’s concussion guidelines⁴⁹ ⁵⁰
The International Cricket Council (ICC) mandates structured on-field assessment (SCAT6) at match breaks, end of play, and at 24 and 48-hour intervals. Players diagnosed with concussion must be immediately removed and cannot return the same day. Return-to-play protocols typically take at least 7 days and include: 24 hours relative rest, light aerobic exercise, light training, and progressively returning to full participation—but junior players (under 18) must wait a minimum of 14 days after symptom clearance before competitive play.

In June 2025, the ICC introduced a mandatory minimum seven-day stand-down for any player diagnosed with a concussion,⁵¹ and teams must now nominate designated concussion replacements before a match⁵².

The ICC has also set specific standards that all approved helmets must meet. These are (BS 7928:2013 + A1:2019 standard, which includes tests for neck protectors):⁵³ ⁵⁴

Faceguard penetration testing at realistic ball impact speeds
Testing against both men’s (5.5 ounce) and junior (4.75 ounce) cricket balls
Neck protector impact testing specifically designed to reduce basal skull and neck injuries

Also, currently the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC, the body that makes laws for cricket) has concluded after that law changes are not necessary, instead emphasising umpire discretion under Law 41.6, which allows umpires to call dangerous short-pitched deliveries as no-balls if bowlers exceed shoulder height or if the batter lacks skill to face them safely.⁵⁵ ⁵⁶ One would imagine this would cover all scenarios, however, we know this is not the case.

A bit about helmet design
Cricket helmets need to meet three competing requirements: protection, visibility, and weight. An improvement in one area is likely to compromise the other two.

When a batter walks out to face 140 kmph bowling, what they need most is clarity. They need to see the ball early and track it right out of the bowler’s hand. That means the helmet can’t be too big, too heavy, too bulky, or too close around the eyes. At the same time, protection demands more coverage, especially around vulnerable areas like the jaw hinge and lower skull. And then there’s weight: add too much carbon fibre or too thick a liner, and the helmet becomes a neck injury waiting to happen, not to mention general discomfort and possibly compromising the athlete’s ability to move their head.

We also have evidence of serious blind spots in helmet design: before Phil Hughes passed in 2014, no major manufacturer seriously considered that the most catastrophic head injury in cricket might come from below the helmet and behind the ear, simply because nothing of the sort had been recorded before. It took Hughes’ fatality for the entire cricket world to realise how vulnerable that area actually was-⁵⁷ ⁵⁸ something any trainee doctor is likely to know. Suddenly, manufacturers scrambled to create neck guards, which remain optional to this day. I shudder to think whose blood is going to buy us the next development in helmet technology.

At the moment, most modern helmets use:⁵⁹ ⁶⁰

A hard outer shell of ABS, fibreglass, or carbon fibre
A foam liner, usually EPS or multi-density foam
A steel or titanium grill
Padding around the jaw and chin

They perform very well against linear acceleration (straight-line impacts), but many of the worst brain injuries come from rotational acceleration,⁶¹ ⁶² when the head violently twists rather than just moves backward: traditional helmets aren’t great at stopping such injuries, and current testing standards often don’t measure it.⁶³ ⁶⁴ ⁶⁵ By the way, learning this has made me genuinely grateful that Gill walked away from his third injury.

To recount, at the moment, the ICC requires helmet’s to be tested for whether the ball can penetrate the grill, peak velocity impacts, protection against both senior and junior cricket balls, and for neck guard impacts.⁵⁴

What we’re missing: tests for rotational concussion risk, no requirement for repeat-impact safety (a helmet can pass the test once and still weaken after a few blows), and there is no measurement system or guideline that helps medics determine how long a player should be out of the game in case of non-concussive injuries. Or even repeat non-concussive traumas that happen within a short timeframe like Gill’s.

The technology cricket isn’t using⁶⁶ ⁶⁷ ⁶⁸ ⁶⁹ ⁷⁰ ⁷¹ ⁷²
In American football, ice hockey, and even rugby, athletes now routinely wear helmets or mouthguards that contain:

accelerometers
gyroscopes
rotational-force sensors
radio transmitters to send impact data to support staff

The moment an athlete suffers a dangerous hit, medical personnel get an alert.
There’s no argument, no debate, no “I feel fine, I’ll carry on.”

Cricket could have this tomorrow if our administrators took this issue seriously enough. The technology is cheap, lightweight, and has already been validated in other sports.

A smart cricket helmet could tell the physio: this was a 75g impact with significant rotational acceleration. Used in combination with a standardised medical guideline from the ICC, that player could be removed immediately and rested for as long as required. And maybe if this happens, there may be a cultural shift where we wouldn’t need a Ravindra Jadeja falling about being dizzy during an innings break, and then have the team management answer batshit questions about whether the substitute was a like-for-like replacement.⁷³ ⁷⁴

There are also exciting innovations happening which don’t involve adding meters to the helmet, such as 3D-printed lattice structures which deform in controlled ways to absorb and dissipate energy more efficiently than traditional foam (they’re already used in some of the safest American football helmets)⁷⁵⁷⁶⁷⁷and multi-impact liners, which maintain their protective performance across several blows⁷⁸ ⁷⁹.

I’ve done a tabular comparison of existing international cricket helmets with those used in F1 races and NFL matches in Appendix 2, if you want to scroll down.

Risk Compensation
I just want to note a human tendency that has been verified by research: the safer we feel, the more risk we take. It has been demonstrated repeatedly:

Cyclists ride faster with helmets⁸⁰ ⁸¹ ⁸²
Ice hockey players hit harder when facial cages are added⁸³
American football players tackle more aggressively with better padding⁸⁴ ⁸⁵

There’s no clear, modern (2020s) empirical study linking helmet use leads to increased aggressive shot-making or riskier batting in cricket, but humans are humans, and so hopefully any future studies about the use and usefulness of protective gear in cricket will take this into account.

So what to do?
Here are my suggestions as a non-medically trained fan:

A. Medical Safety Protocols

Collaboration between ICC and doctors who specialise in cranial trauma, neck injuries, etc. (whether concussive or not), and sports medicine specialists from other sports with more advanced athlete support for such injuries to study and understand all such injuries better and release recommendations that are either endorsed or updated annually as required.
An athlete who has suffered two head/neck injuries within the space of 30 days (or whatever number medical professionals agree on) should automatically be placed on a two-week mandatory medical rest.
A full set of medical tests and scans at a hospital (not just by the team physio) after every head/neck injury.
Actual regular sports medicine assessments, not just after injuries occur.
Independent medical oversight that is not influenced by team selection pressures (either from the team or the athlete themselves).
MANDATORY MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT for any injured players, and also for those returning from these kinds of injuries.

B. Monitoring & Injury Tracking

Mandatory biomechanical screening to identify high-risk movement patterns for each athlete.
Career-long injury tracking to identify cumulative trauma patterns and to strengthen vulnerable areas before injuries happen.
Smart helmet or wearable impact monitoring to quantify dangerous blows and guide medical care.

C. Workload Management

Workload management for all cricketers, no matter how important they seem to be for a particular team or cricket ecosystem.
The use of ACWR and/ or other sports science metrics to identify and prevent dangerous spikes in workload.

D. Technical & Skill Interventions

Mandatory bouncer-playing classes for all cricketers. If bouncers are part of the game and cannot be curbed, we need to teach every cricketer how to play them. ICC can standardise these educational modules.
Annual board audits checking whether cricketers have received from each board have received these lessons.
Active field awareness training so players stop colliding. Collisions are so preventable.

E. Equipment, Technology & Design

Using all technology available for helmets that actively prevents ball-hit injuries.
Adoption of advanced materials (3D lattice structures, multi-density liners) to reduce both linear and rotational impact forces.
Exploring mandatory neck guards, redesigned to address current comfort and visibility issues.

F. Cultural Redo

A cultural shift that doesn’t look at injuries as weaknesses.
The cricketing ecosystem needs to stop simply mourning dead cricketers and start actively preventing these deaths.
Stop treating head and neck injuries as “part of cricket.” They’re not inevitable; they’re preventable.

In conclusion
As a cricket fan, I’ve admired the several instances of cricketers putting their bodies on the line for … for what? A match? Rishabh Pant batting with a broken foot, Anil Kumble bowling with a broken jaw, Chris Woakes batting with whatever was going on with his shoulder, Cheteshwar Pujara wearing balls, Greame Smith walking out to bat with a broken hand, Phil Hughes dying. All these have something in common: cricket valorises suffering. We celebrate wounded heroes, but never ask why they had to be wounded in the first place.

Name	Country	Year	Type of Injury
Phillip Hughes⁸⁶	Australia	2014	Neck (vertebral artery dissection)
Raman Lamba⁸⁷	India	1998	Head (intracranial hemorrhage)
Ben Austin⁵ ⁶	Australia	2025	Head/Neck (blow at practice)
Ankit Keshri⁸⁸	India	2015	Head (collision)
Wilf Slack⁸⁹	England	1989	Unknown (collapsed batting)

Our dead: An incomplete list of cricketers dead due to head/ neck trauma. Truly, shame on us.

Cricket is a sport. It’s my favourite sport. It’s a wonderful, beautiful, demanding, meaningful sport. But it is still just a sport. Cricketers are human beings with futures, families, and brains that deserve protection. The solutions exist. The research is clear. The deaths are preventable. And it is well past time we started preventing these unnecessary deaths instead of mourning them.

___

Appendices

Appendix 1: No surprises
I don’t have access to Gill’s workload or any personal statistics, but I wanted to understand how correct my instincts were about my hypothesis regarding these three recent injuries and his workload. I’ve made some assumptions, and take everything with a healthy spoonful of salt, but here are my calculations.

I’ve used the following research-established numbers:⁹⁰ ⁹¹ ⁹² ⁹³

ACWR Range	Risk Category	Injury Risk Multiplier
< 0.80	Undertrained	Moderate (fitness declining)
0.80–1.30	Optimal	Lowest injury risk
1.30–1.50	Elevated Risk	1.5–2× baseline risk
1.50–2.00	High Risk	3–5× baseline risk
> 2.00	Danger Zone	5–8× baseline risk

My assumption is that 1 hour of active cricket = 1 workload unit. This leads to the following table:

Format	Match Duration	Warm-up/Cool-down	Total Hours per Match	Workload Units	Notes
T20 Match	~3 hours	~1 hour	4 hours	4 units	Single day event; quick recovery cycle
ODI Match	~7 hours (50 overs/ side)	~1 hour	8 hours	8 units	Single day event; moderate duration
Test Match (per day)	~6.5 hours (3 sessions: 2+2+2.5 hours)	~0.5 hours	7 hours/ day	7 units/ day	5 consecutive days without recovery break
Test Match (total)	6.5 hours/ day × 5 days	0.5 hours/ day × 5 days	35 hours total	35 units total	Cumulative fatigue compounds daily; requires 24-48 hours recovery post-match

So here’s Gill’s recent workload:

Date Range	Series	Matches	Hours per Match	Total Hours (Workload Units)
Jan 22-Feb 12	India vs England (Home)	5 T20Is + 3 ODIs	T20: 4 hours ODI: 8 hours	44 hours
Feb 20-Mar 9	ICC Champions Trophy	ODI Tournament	ODI: 8 hours	32-48 hours
Mar 22-Jun 3	IPL 2025 (Gujarat Titans captain)	T20 League	T20: 4 hours	60 hours
Jun 20-Aug 12	India tour of England	5 Tests	Test: 35 hours each	175 hours
Sep 18-Oct 1	Rest/Break	–	–	0 hours
Oct 2-14	India vs West Indies	2 Tests	Test: 35 hours each	70 hours
Oct 19-Nov 8	India tour of Australia	3 ODIs + 5 T20Is	ODI: 8 hours T20: 4 hours	44 hours
Nov 14-26	India vs South Africa	2 Tests	Test: 35 hours each	70 hours
Nov 30-Dec 19	India vs South Africa (cont.)	3 ODIs + 5 T20Is	ODI: 8 hours T20: 4 hours	44 hours

Gill’s workload calculation

The weekly ACWR analysis (bold typography used for each of the injuries):

Week Starting	Activity	Acute Workload (7 day period in hours)	Chronic Workload (28-day avg. in hours/ week)	ACWR	Risk Zone
Jan 22	England T20/ODI start	16 hours (2 T20s + 1 ODI)	14 hours/ week baseline	1.14	Optimal
Apr 1	IPL mid-season	8 hours (2 T20s)	8.6 hours/ week	0.93	Optimal
Jun 1	Pre-England Tests	4 hours (1 T20)	8 hours/ week	0.50	Undertrained
Jun 20	England Test 1	35 hours (5-day Test)	14.5 hours/ week	2.41	Danger Zone
Jul 2	England Test 2	35 hours	22 hours/ week	1.59	High Risk
Sep 25	Pre-WI Tests	0 hours (rest)	12 hours/ week	0	Recovery
Oct 2-8	WI Test 1	35 hours	17.5 hours/ week	2.00	Danger Zone
Oct 10-16	WI Test 2 (injured)	21 hours (retired Day 3)	19 hours / week	1.10	Moderate
Oct 19-25	Australia ODIs	16 hours (2 ODIs)	28 hours/ week	0.57	Undertrained
Oct 26-Nov 1	Australia T20s	12 hours(3 T20s)	26 hours/ week	0.46	Severely Undertrained
Nov 9-15	Travel/prep	~7 hours (assuming light training)	21 hours / week	0.33	Undertrained
Nov 14-20	SA Test 1	35 hours	21 hours/ week	1.67	High Risk

Gill’s ACWR analysis

Now, make of the above whatever you will. Correlation is not causation and the ball-hit injury happened after a rest period so that injury doesn’t fit the ACWR model. However, given the above, I’m not sure I’d dismiss the injury-pattern as as just very poor luck: while ACWR may not fully explain all three injuries, the cumulative fatigue coupled with inadequate recovery protocols do seem to create demonstrable vulnerability.

The point isn’t that ACWR perfectly predicts all three injuries. It doesn’t. As a model it predicts risk of something happening rather than saying with surety that it will happen. However, perhaps it can tell us something about the impact of inadequate recovery windows, format transitions, and cumulative load overlapping issues that increase injury susceptibility, especially when combined with psychological stress from captaincy and the normal stochasticity of playing cricket at 140 kmph.

Appendix 2: Comparison table between helmets used in F1, NFL, and international cricket

Here’s a comparison between helmets used by F1 racers, elite American Football athletes, and international cricketers (I’ve used bold typography for features I think cricket helmets should have, and couldn’t find verifiable data for helmet weights):

Feature	F1 Racing⁹⁴ ⁹⁵ ⁹⁶ ⁹⁷ ⁹⁸ ⁹⁹	NFL (American Football)¹⁰⁰ ¹⁰¹ ¹⁰² ¹⁰³ ¹⁰⁴ ¹⁰⁵ ¹⁰⁶ ¹⁰⁷	International Cricket⁵⁴ ¹⁰⁸ ¹⁰⁹ ¹¹⁰ ¹¹¹
Protection	Toughest shell. Built to survive high-speed crashes, resists hits from all angles and projectiles. Added ballistic strip on visor for extra protection.	Cutting-edge impact protection. Designed to absorb hits from all directions; includes special padding to prevent concussions and uses smart sensors.	Protects against fast balls and bouncers. Hard shell and grille stop balls entering; strong for head-on hits, but less effective for twisting injuries.
Visibility	Maximum: very wide visor, minimal distortion, designed for 180° vision at 300 km/h.	Wide and high field of view. Thin facebars ensure players see clearly, important for catching and dodging tackles.	High: grille and shell designed to allow batters to see the bowler and ball clearly, but some guard designs can slightly obstruct vision above/below.
Special Features	Fire-resistant, radio setup, multiple visor options for sunlight.	Smart sensors detect hard hits, customisable fit, extra light facemasks (titanium options).	Removable padding, neck guards added after recent fatalities, optional extra light titanium grille for better comfort.
Crash/Impact Testing	Most rigorous: tested for hits from race wrecks, flying debris. Top global safety standards.	Lab-tested for head injuries, including concussion risk—best for rotational/twisting impacts.	Tested for direct ball impacts, facial and neck injuries; not formally tested for twisting/rotational impacts yet.
Overall	Most protective helmet in any sport, a bit heavier but unbeatable for safety.	Best for head impacts and preventing concussions in team sports.Tech is advancing fast.	Lightest, adequate for direct hits, but not yet matching F1/NFL for twisting impact safety.

Comparison table between helmets used in F1, NFL, and international cricket

I’m not suggesting just using a helmet from another sport. I’m saying we can make our helmets much better right now if we wanted to.

~~I cannot believe I’ve put in appendices for a goddamn blog post.~~

Sources (I’ve removed the duplicates so there are fewer links than the numbered links above)

Author: Finrod Bites Wolves

A blogger. View all posts by Finrod Bites Wolves

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