On a visit to Singapore, after I gushed to him about the beautiful, and very large, museum I had just visited, my cab driver—a man without any personal connection to cricket—said something touching and thoughtful: cricket seemed like a “pan-Indian language.” He’d watched Indian migrant workers playing the sport in parks and public spaces, and felt it was “a way for the Indian workers to keep up their connection with the homeland.”
Academic research confirms what the cab driver observed. Sport provides “diasporic communities with a powerful means for creating transnational ties” while shaping “ideas of their ethnic and racial identities.” Cricket becomes “a significant medium through which local experiences are translated, diasporic parameters reconfigured and national identity complicated.”1
In growth economics, Robert Solow’s work separates economic growth into two parts: what can be explained by adding more labour and capital, and what cannot. The unexplained part is the Solow residual – the contribution of technology, organisation and ideas once more workers and more machines have been accounted for.23
In economics:
Labour is the work people do, and
Capital means all the tools and equipment people use to do the work
Applied to cricket, the analogy is:
Labour: players, coaches, umpires, support staff, administrators.
Capital: stadiums, training facilities, broadcast infrastructure, league investments, media rights.
Cricket’s global rise can be thought of in the same language. There is a visible story of more players, more matches, more money and more stadiums. Alongside these are formats, platforms, new audiences and institutions that are helping the game grow, beyond what labour and capital alone would predict.
This is cricket’s Solow growth story.
The Solow lens: growth beyond inputs In a standard growth-accounting framework, output Y depends on capital K, labour L and a technology term A. When economists measure growth over time, they first calculate how much extra output comes from increases in K and L. The remainder of growth – the part not explained by these inputs – is attributed to changes in A, the Solow residual. It represents effects like better technology, improved organisation and more efficient processes.
Cricket’s output may be thought of in terms of:
Fans and viewership
Match attendance
Revenue and commercial value
Participation and playing nations
Once the contribution of labour and capital is recognised, there is still a large “something else” driving growth: formats, digital reach, women’s cricket, new markets, governance changes and cultural dynamics.
The visible inputs: labour and capital in cricket Over the last two decades, more players, support staff, and officials have been able to treat cricket as full-time work.45 On the capital side, investment has risen sharply.67 More labour and more capital would, on their own, be expected to expand cricket’s footprint. However, the scale and pattern of growth indicate that additional forces are at work.
Residual drivers In Solow’s terms, technology is not just gadgets; it is a better way of combining labour and capital to produce more output. In cricket, “technology” may be read broadly: formats, platforms, governance models and cultural transmission.23
Formats here function like a productivity-enhancing technology, since T20s allow the same talent pool and stadium infrastructure to generate more matches, more broadcast hours and more global attention per season than longer formats alone can do.
The second residual driver is how cricket uses digital platforms to reach and retain fans. Digital reach allows cricket to penetrate markets where linear television had limited presence, to offer short-form content to casual viewers, and to collect granular data on fan behaviour.8910
A major structural shift in cricket’s growth story is the rise of women’s cricket, which expands both the playing base and the fanbase. This is more than an incremental increase in labour. Incorporating women fully into the professional game changes the scale and diversity of talent, opens new commercial categories and attracts new audiences.11121314
Cricket’s growth is also being shaped by its spread into new geographies, particularly through structured leagues and global events.1516
Global tournaments amplify this effect:
ICC has expanded the number of teams in men’s and women’s T20 World Cups and increased the frequency of global events, providing more nations with regular exposure on major platforms.17
Cricket’s inclusion in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics was confirmed in 2023, with a six-team T20 competition for both men and women approved by the International Olympic Committee.15
Olympic participation is expected to support recognition and funding for cricket in national sports systems that previously gave it little priority, especially in the Americas, Europe and parts of Asia.18
Together, these developments act like opening new export markets in economic growth: the same product – cricket – now reaches more consumers in more countries.
A further contributor to cricket’s Solow-style residual is how the game is organised and governed. The franchise model aligns investors, broadcasters and local boards around shared incentives.1920 Long-term agreements for leagues like the IPL, WPL, PSL, BBL, SA20, ILT20 and MLC encourage sustained investment in academies, scouting and marketing.21
ICC’s governance and commercial approach has also evolved towards a portfolio of global events, with structured revenue-sharing mechanisms and clear qualification pathways, rather than relying solely on bilateral (and my much-missed trilateral) series for income and exposure.2223Separate and more tailored media-rights packages for different regions and for men’s and women’s events reflect more sophisticated commercial design, allowing cricket’s governing bodies to capture greater value from diverse markets.242526
As with economic growth, productivity gains in cricket are not evenly distributed. Franchise leagues and global events concentrate revenues and influence among a small set of boards and investors, widening the gap between cricket’s core and its periphery.27282930At the same time, calendar congestion reflects a classic growth constraint: more formats and competitions compete for the same finite player time, increasing injury risk and diluting bilateral cricket.3132 Rising output, in short, comes with coordination costs—and not all participants share equally in the gains.
No economist can measure the value of a game that allows a migrant worker to feel briefly at home. But whatever that value is, it compounds enough that the cab driver without any links to cricket was able to feel for it. In economic terms, cricket’s “A” – its equivalent of total factor productivity – is rising. The story of the sport’s future will depend not only on how many people play and how much money flows in, but on how effectively formats, institutions and cultures continue to convert those inputs into sustainable, global growth.
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.12
31 October 2025, he was struck on his helmet by a Josh Hazlewood snorter that seemed to ricochet off his bat.34 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,56 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.78
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:
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)1819
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)2021
Ball, bat, or ground strike to head, neck or face
Pain, swelling, bleeding, bruising; can mask deeper fracture or brain injury; risk of infection
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 2016.262728 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%).262728 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.262728 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.262728 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.3233 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.3536
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.404142
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:4748
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 guidelines4950 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):5354
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.5556 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-5758 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.
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,6162 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.636465 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 using66676869707172 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.7374
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 blows7879.
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:
Ice hockey players hit harder when facial cages are added83
American football players tackle more aggressively with better padding8485
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.
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:90919293
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:
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):
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)
One day, a young Talib beat Laila with a radio antenna. When he was done, he gave a final whack to the back of her neck and said, “I see you again, I’ll beat you until your mother’s milk leaks out of your bones.” – A passage from the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, which describes the lives of two fictional Afghan women.1
While the above quote is said to a fictional woman in a novel, the reality is that in just the past 12 months, Afghanistan’s Taliban government has: 1. Codified 35 restrictive articles banning women’s voices in public, requiring full Arabic-style hijab, and prohibiting depiction of humans or animals in media. Women may not travel, study, or appear in public spaces without a male guardian (mahram).2 2. Mandated that women adopt “Arabic hijab style” within five days, with imprisonment for violators. Families are held responsible for non-compliance.3 3. Prohibited women from entering three district parks, extending the preexisting national ban.3 4. Criminalised women speaking or singing audibly in public, across broadcast and real-life settings.4 5. Prohibited women from afternoon medical visits without male accompaniment, severely restricting access to care in provinces like Badakhshan.5 6. Authorised arrests of women and men for “moral corruption”; 38 arrests reported in nine provinces.6 7. Expelled all female medical students from health training colleges nationwide.7 8. Prohibited shopkeepers from talking to female customers in Takhar and Nangarhar provinces to “protect modesty”.8 9. Ordered women to block home windows to avoid being seen by neighbors.9 10. Blocked Hazara-led religious ceremonies in Bamyan and Daykundi Provinces ahead of Ashura.10 11. Facilitated dispossession of Hazara farmlands for Kuchi nomads under “historic restitution” justifications; over 25,000 displaced in 2024–25.11 12. Diverted international rations away from Hazara-majority central highlands to Pashtun-controlled areas.11 13. Marginalised Shia observances by defining “permissible Islamic behavior” under Sunni Hanafi doctrines.12
In all, in the past few months, Afghanistan’s Taliban government has entrenched a dual system of apartheid– gender and sectarian- now recognised by experts as constituting crimes against humanity and genocide risk indicators according to the UN and Human Rights Watch.
And yet, cricket remains nearly entirely silent.
ICC’s policy on political intervention in cricket The International Cricket Council (ICC) is cricket’s international governing body. It claims to uphold the autonomy of cricket via its official policy, which prohibits political appointments and undue government interference in the administration of national cricket boards, favouring free elections and board independence,13 and they can suspend a country’s membership for government meddling, with bans or warnings applied until compliance is restored.14
Here are some recent examples of this policy in action:
Zimbabwe (2019): The ICC suspended Zimbabwe Cricket for failing to ensure no government interference in its cricket administration, barring their teams from ICC events until the suspension was lifted.15
Sri Lanka (2024): Sri Lanka Cricket was suspended by the ICC due to evidence of government interference, including the sacking of board officials and attempts at regulatory control.16
The South Africa Precedent One does wonder what the difference is between apartheid South Africa, and present-day Afghanistan in ICC’s eyes.
In 1970, the ICC banned South Africa from international cricket due to racial apartheid policies that prevented non-white players from representing the national team and subjected touring players of color to discriminatory treatment.1718 This ban remained in effect for 21 years, until Nelson Mandela’s release and the dismantling of apartheid in 1991.1718
The ICC maintained the ban despite South Africa’s 1976 attempt to desegregate cricket through the formation of a non-racial governing body, the South African Cricket Union.1718 Only after apartheid’s complete dismantling and at the personal request of Nelson Mandela was South Africa readmitted to the ICC and Test cricket in 1991.17
Here’s a comparison of the actions of the Taliban government in Afghanistan with those of some other comparable governments:
Category
Taliban Afghanistan (2024–2025)
Apartheid South Africa (1948–1991)
Nazi Germany (1933–1945)
Myanmar Junta vs Rohingya (2016–Present)
Basis of Oppression
Gender, ethnicity, and religion (women, Hazaras, Shia, Tajiks)
Race and ethnicity (Black Africans, Coloureds, Indians)
Apparently not an apartheid according to the powers that be in Cricket
Negotiating with terrorists It’s evident that the ICC believes in being gentle with cricket’s resident terrorists. In April 2025, the ICC confirmed it would not cut funding to the Afghanistan Cricket Board and would instead “pursue dialogue and constructive engagement”.42 An ICC spokesperson told Sky News: “We are committed to leveraging our influence constructively to support the Afghanistan Cricket Board in fostering cricket development and ensuring playing opportunities for both men and women in Afghanistan”.43
Naturally, this approach has yielded no progress.
The India Connection I believe India’s geopolitics is directly shaping the ICC’s approach to Afghanistan, a pattern evident across multiple recent ICC decisions.
India is responsible for a large part of the ICC’s global revenue,44 primarily through the BCCI and the massive domestic cricket market, and Jay Shah, the son of Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, was elected unopposed as ICC chairman in December 2024, after serving as BCCI secretary and Asian Cricket Council chief.45 India has helped build Afghanistan’s cricketing infrastructure, provided technical training, hosted Afghan teams, funded stadiums, and arranged commercial sponsorships.46
While India does not formally recognise the Taliban government in Afghanistan,47 it (we the citizens, our elected politicians) have adopted a policy of “engagement without recognition.”4849 This means India maintains working diplomatic and economic relations with the Taliban regime, while refraining from granting it official, de jure legitimacy.49 We engage with the Taliban government as the de facto authority in Kabul for practical and strategic reasons, therefore granting it legitimacy.
India’s activities in Afghanistan under the Taliban include diplomatic representation, large-scale humanitarian aid, development assistance, and ongoing political dialogue, especially to safeguard its security and regional interests.50 This approach mirrors India’s policies towards other regimes like the Myanmar junta and Taiwan: open channels for practical coordination, yet withholding formal recognition, consistent with international law on diplomatic relations.5152
However, In October 2025, following the visit of Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to New Delhi, India announced the upgrading of its technical mission in Kabul to a full embassy, a clear sign of deepening engagement, despite the absence of formal recognition.53
At this point, please also note that I do understand that sanctions against Afghanistan would be less effective than those against apartheid South Africa because the Taliban government, unlike South Africa’s white minority regime, does not depend on international legitimacy or economic integration with cricket-playing nations, and yet if India cared about the girls, women and minorities being oppressed in Afghanistan, they would be banned from cricket.
But India needs a counterweight to Pakistani terrorism against India. Afghanistan under the Taliban serves as a strategic buffer and potential ally in India’s regional security calculations,54 and the Afghan women and minorities are simply not part of the consideration. And as we know, India’s power has affected ICC’s decisions previously.555657
What’s happening right now Australia remains the only country in cricket that has taken a stand on the matter by refusing to play bilateral matches, citing deep discomfort with the Taliban regime’s escalating crackdown on women’s rights and participation in sport. Since 2021, Cricket Australia has cancelled multiple series, most recently a T20 fixture in 2025.5859
Australia also hosts exiled women cricketers from Afghanistan, such as Benafsha Hashimi and Firooza Amiri, the latter of whom has pleaded that the ICC doesn’t even need to ban the Afghanistan men’s team: “Don’t ban the Afghanistan men’s side from playing international cricket but do expect them to do more for the women and girls who don’t have the same rights they do,” Amiri told ESPN, once again underlining cricket’s silence.60
In March 2025, Human Rights Watch addressed an open letter to ICC Chair Jay Shah, urging the council to suspend Afghanistan’s membership until women and girls regain access to education and sport. Minky Worden, HRW’s Director of Global Initiatives, argued that the ICC’s permissiveness “places it on the side of the Taliban, not the women cricketers in exile”.61
Human Rights Watch and several national cricket boards, including the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), have pressed the ICC to adopt a formal human rights policy aligned with UN principles, similar to frameworks now required by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).62 The IOC previously suspended Afghanistan’s Olympic Committee in 1999 for barring female athletes- an exact parallel to today’s situation.
Publicly, the council maintains support for the displaced Afghan women cricketers in exile but has stopped short of recognition or reallocation of resources to them.63 In April 2025, the ICC announced a separate initiative to support displaced Afghan women cricketers through a task force partnering with Cricket Australia, the England and Wales Cricket Board, and the Board of Control for Cricket in India.64 Critically, however, this new funding stream does not reduce or redirect any money from the ACB- the board responsible for excluding women continues to receive full funding.65
As of 2025, the ICC continues to provide the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) with approximately $17 million USD (£13 million) in annual funding, exclusively allocated to men’s cricket.66 This funding persists even as Afghanistan remains the only ICC full member without a women’s team.
Meanwhile, while the International Cricket Council continues to sleep on their job, 2.2 million girls remain banned from school and university education indefinitely.67
NB: I’m not expecting this to make any institutional changes. I’m not expecting any difference in the state of the suffering Afghans. I have no hope of anything getting better. I even understand the geopolitics and the realpolitik behind the Indian Government’s engagement with the terrorists- they’re trying to choose fewer terrorism deaths for Indians over people they are not morally responsible for. I’m writing because I’m exhausted. I’m tired of women paying the price and men absconding responsibility, even traveling the world playing goddamn cricket with impunity while at it. And I’m writing because who else will? The terrorised Afghans certainly cannot. The exiled Afghan cricketers can barely speak out even in a supposedly safe nation like Australia. But perhaps one day this piece may serve as the evidence that people knew what was happening, or even just show those who suffered that we saw them. You were not erased, my sisters.
Cricket is a statistically oriented sport. Cricket fans are used to scrolling pages of statistics for their teams and players they wish to know more about. And yet, we don’t have reliable metrics for measuring and comparing fielding performances.
Fans know, of course, when we see a cohesive fielding performance, such as New Zealand’s against Pakistan during the inaugural Champions Trophy match in Karachi on Wednesday, 19 February 2025. We also know a sloppy one, such as India’s against Bangladesh the next day in Dubai. Greatness is always visible in the doing on a cricket field.
We fantasise about taking that perfect flying catch, or executing a a sharp run out when we play, but we still do not have a universally accepted set of metrics to really understand what a “perfect” catch is, or what makes a run out “sharp”. For a sport that’s managed to tame the nebulous Leg before Wicket dismissal into four measurable criteria (including the umpire’s decision), it sure is confusing why fielding continues to confound us so. Especially when cricket fans value it so.
I’ve wondered what it would take to build parametres that measured fielding performance, and asked different cricket writers about how they would go about it too. At the moment I think such a measurement must include the following:
1. Define the deconstructed components of fielding
What are the parts that make the whole for fielding in cricket? I think we can break them down to getting in position, including speed and ball awareness; catching; throwing, with throwing itself divided into speed and accuracy; and field awareness.
2. Decide how we value different types of catching
Is slip catching the same as catching at point? Are they equivalent to a boundary catch? What about wicket keeping catches, with those padded cymbals for hands? And what happens when fields tag team a catch?
3. Scoring
Each fielder may be rated on the above, that is, scores for emplacement, for catching, and for throwing. Additionally, points can be deducted for errors and added for faultless execution, gymnastics-style.
Now for expanding upon the four criteria I mentioned in the first point above.
1. Emplacement- How a fielder gets into position.
a. Ball Awareness
A lack of ball awareness is most often evidenced in whether or not fielders are backing throws up. Overthrows are annoying, and often damaging. Dropped catches are also often about active attention, since players who expect the ball to come to them are also ready to field it, and ball awareness will allow us to gauge how attentive a player usually is.
b. Speed
Cricket already measures the amount of time a fielder had to react to an incoming catch, and we can certainly measure the distance the fielder is standing from the batter. Therefore, as middle school maths taught us, Speed = Distance/ Time. This will capture a fielder’s fitness and running ability, as well as their reaction time.
2. Catching- Self explanatory
Off the top of my head, I can count eight types of catches
i. Tag-Teamed Catches- When two or more fielders are involved in completing the same catch. Here players must be especially aware of each other and cognizant of throwing the ball before they drop it, or braced to catch one coming at an odd angle from the first catcher. I believe points should be assigned to all the involved fielders.
ii. Boundary Catches- Catches pouched so close to the boundary that the fielder must be aware of the ropes/ cushions.
iii. Outfield Catches- Catches outside the 30 yard circle, but before the ball reaches the boundary fielders. It may involve either infielders or boundary fielders running to the catch.
iv. Infield Catches- Catches at or within the 30 yard circle that do not include the ones detailed below.
v. Slip Catches- You know the ones.
vi. Keeper Catches- This is interesting because keepers have such a unique job. Of course they have the advantage of padding, but they often have to catch blind, and when diving can easily end up in front of first slip. They also must actively read the ball while it is being delivered, just like the batter.
vii. Close Catches- Any variation on Silly Point, Silly Mid Off, Silly Mid On, and Forward Short Leg.
viii. Caught and Bowled- When the bowler catches the ball during or soon after their follow through.
3. Throwing- collecting and getting the ball back to the pitch.
Throw Speed- easily measured.
Throw Accuracy- also easily measured.
4. Field Awareness
Poor calling is exasperating to watch and dangerous for the fielders themselves, and fielders need to be aware of which end of the pitch they should throw to.
So how will the scoring happen?
One way to do it is simply begin each match at zero for each fielder, and add points as they field, or misfield, as the numerator, and the number of opportunity they had to field as the denominator. Each act of fielding can have a predetermined value, and at the end of the match, I propose we bring all the scores down to a scale of 10.
A decision must be taken about whether each day in test cricket is rated separately, or whether performances are rated by innings, since both bring forth interesting insights into how different fielders manage sessions, innings, and days. A fifth continuous session of fielding is sure to differ from the first session in both execution, strategy, and energy.
This kind of a rating scale will take into account how often a fielder comes into play, and will account for how good they already are, given that they are likely to be placed according to their previously demonstrated abilities.
Of course, this will add to all the counting and mathematics we already do as cricket tragics, but as matches add up, we’ll have new stats to pour ourselves into and write articles about. I count that as a win.
Chasing Tales 