Daily Times

A 25-year-old Australian cricketer died the other day after he was hit on the head by a short ball during a cricket game. Any death, especially the untimely and unexpected death of a young person, is always sad, whatever the circumstances might be. Accidents will happen but however much we might call this injury — or even the one where a Pakistani batsman was also recently hit in the head by a bouncing ball but luckily survived with only a ‘minor’ fracture — an accident, the fact remains that these short balls are bowled for the express purpose of producing the fear in a batsman about such an injury. And that, in my opinion, is just not right. As the saying goes: this is not cricket.

Sports come in different sorts and may be categorised in three different broad types based on the amount of physical contact involved and the chance of physical injury. First, we have full contact sports like boxing, wrestling, martial arts, US football, rugby, ice hockey and other such individual or team sports. Then we have the sort of semi-contact sports like field hockey, soccer, basketball and most other open field sports. The least dangerous are probably the ball and stick or ball and racquet type sports, especially those where the opposing players are separated by a net. The major exception to the relative safety of a ball and stick game is polo. And my dear readers, I apologise but I am going to refer to US football as football, and what the rest of the world calls football as soccer.

The point that I really want to make by listing these sports is that we, as individuals, choose which sport we wish to participate in and for children it is their parents who often make that decision. Of course, athleticism and ability are important in determining what level a person might play at. Over the last few decades, physical danger from contact sports, especially boxing and more recently football, are being highlighted. The neurological effects of these two are now well documented. Perhaps the greatest living example of what boxing does to the brain is Muhammad Ali, the most colourful professional athlete of his time who is now a shuffling caricature of his former self due to brain damage from repeated blows to his head during his boxing career.

US football is now being examined for its effect on players. Brain damage due to repeated head injury is quite common in football players. The importance of such injury is becoming more evident since this sport is played very widely in the US, starting from school onwards. Besides often under-diagnosed head injuries (concussions) during the game, fractures and damage to internal organs also occur with some frequency. In short, football is a dangerous game and most players who choose to play it realise that. However, it is just now becoming evident how dangerous it actually is.

More than 40 years ago, while I was a junior trainee in surgery in a US hospital, a senior trainee doctor, who hailed from south India, and I were dispatched to play game doctors for a local community college football game. After almost every play my senior doctor wanted to send half the players off to the hospital for X-rays and observation. Finally, the team coach sat him down and explained the facts of life to him and, of course, we were never invited again to play game doctor by that college athletic staff. Some parents and teachers believe that boys should be tough and play sports that are physically demanding and, most importantly, that they should keep playing even if they are injured. Sadly, many boys and young men (and now even some young women) actually believe such nonsense.

In many post-colonial British Raj countries, cricket is a popular sport. And cricket is thought of as a civilised game where both sides are expected to play the game in a ‘gentlemanly’ fashion. Even though athleticism and ability are both necessary, brute force is rarely a required qualification for a good cricketer. The exception of course is that particular subset of cricket players, the fast bowlers. Whatever the ‘art’ in fast bowling might be, the primary purpose of such bowling is to intimidate opposing batsmen and force them to make errors. The hard cricket ball coming towards a batsman’s head at something close to 90 miles an hour has to be intimidating. And, in my opinion, the best thing the batsman can do when confronting such a ball is to step out of the way.

Even in a gentlemanly game like cricket, the ‘man’ part intrudes. To avoid every short ball would be considered a sign of not being man enough. While watching a recent test match I was quite surprised to hear the commentator, who is also a former Pakistani test captain, make fun of a Pakistani tailend batsman who kept avoiding the short ball. This commentator barely stopped short of calling this player a coward. The fact that this particular player had bowled almost half the opposing team out in the previous innings was of course beside the point.

Most serious sports injuries obviously happen because of the way full contact sports are played. My interest however is in those injuries that occur because of risk taking behaviour on the part of a player in otherwise less dangerous sports. Standing tall till the last moment in front of a cricket ball coming at your head at 90 miles an hour is definitely taking an unnecessary risk. And the problem is that protective headgear as well as the need to look brave just promotes such behaviour. Whether such balls should be outlawed completely is a question that will have to be addressed by the authorities that run cricket. Even one death in cricket is one too many.

The writer has practiced and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com