Cricket injuries, as the medical studies name them.

What elite injury surveillance found (Australia)

Orchard, Kountouris and Sims of Cricket Australia's National Cricket Centre analysed injuries among elite senior male Australian cricketers over ten seasons, 2006-07 to 2015-16, using the updated international cricket injury definitions of 2016. Their paper appeared in the Open Access Journal of Sports Medicine on 13 December 2016. They reported:

• about 155 match time-loss injuries per 1,000 days of play on average, highest in 50-over cricket, then T20, then first-class matches;
• about 64 injuries per 100 players per season, and an average prevalence of about 12.5 percent (the share of players unavailable at any one time);
• a prevalence of about 20.6 percent among fast bowlers, much higher than in other positions;
• higher prevalence among international players, who play most of the year with little off-season, although match incidence was similar across levels and formats.

The authors regarded sudden increases in workload as a greater injury risk than high workload in itself, and noted that cricket's three formats make large swings in workload common.

The injuries named most often

Hamstring strain

In the Orchard study the hamstring strain was the most common injury by incidence, at about 8.7 per 100 players per season, and it topped the list in every season from 2007-08 onward. The authors linked its rise to the growth of T20 cricket. A suspected hamstring strain needs medical care.

Lumbar stress fracture and bone stress in fast bowlers

The most prevalent injury in the same study was the lumbar stress fracture, a stress fracture in the lower back. It kept about 1.9 percent of players out at any one time and accounted for about 15 percent of all missed playing time. Cricket Australia's junior bowling guidance identifies teenage pace bowlers as the group at highest risk of lumbar bone stress injury, naming sudden increases in workload and rapid growth as risk factors, and strongly recommends that a junior who has lower back pain while bowling stop and see a sports doctor or physiotherapist before bowling again. How the boards limit junior bowling is on junior cricket rules. A suspected stress fracture needs medical care.

Hand and finger injuries

A study of New Zealand Accident Compensation Corporation claims for cricket from 2005 to 2016, published in BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine in 2022, recorded 86,562 injuries: 77,212 among males and 9,350 among females. Incidence was about 64.1 per 1,000 participants for males and 36.1 for females. Hand and finger injuries had the highest pooled rate, 9.2 per 1,000 participants, followed by the lumbar spine at 8.1. Contact-related activities had the highest rate of any activity type, 44.7 per 1,000. Claims rose by about 42.6 percent over the period, but incidence fell from 59.0 per 1,000 in 2006 to 42.8 in 2016. Players aged 10 to 20 were more likely to be injured, and the authors recommended prevention aimed at contact injuries to the hands, fingers and head in that age group.

A ten-year review (2009 to 2018) at one English first-class county, by Ribbans, Chaudhry and Goudriaan in the South African Journal of Sports Medicine (2021), found 45 hand injuries, about 11 percent of which needed surgery. Together they cost 1,416 days of in-season competitive play, and each player had an estimated 18 percent chance each year of a hand injury that cost playing time. A suspected hand or finger injury needs medical care.

Head impacts and concussion

The ICC states that concussion is not a common injury in cricket, but that its possible short- and long-term health risks justify management guidelines. The ECB says its incidence is relatively low but its severity and outcome can be significant, and names causes including being struck by the ball, colliding with other players, hitting the ground and running into boundary walls or fences. The ICC defines sport-related concussion, following the international consensus, as a traumatic brain injury caused by a direct blow to the head, neck or body that transmits an impulsive force to the brain.

ESPNcricinfo reported on 1 June 2022 on two Australian studies. A La Trobe University study commissioned by Cricket Australia and published in 2018 recorded 92 head impacts in Australian men's matches from 2015 to 2017, of which 29 were diagnosed as concussions: about one head impact per 2,000 balls and one concussion per 9,000 balls in male domestic cricket. A 2020 video-analysis study of elite men's and women's matches found that 84 percent of head impacts were to a batter facing a pace bowler and most of the rest to close fielders, with no batter concussed by a spinner's delivery. We did not open either study, so these figures rest on ESPNcricinfo's report and are unconfirmed against the papers. A suspected concussion needs medical care; the rules on it are on concussion rules by board.

Neck injury from a ball strike

The medical evidence at the inquest into the death of Phillip Hughes described the injury he suffered, to the vertebral artery in the neck, as rare but known in contact sports. A suspected neck injury needs medical care. The coroner's findings are on Phillip Hughes and the inquest.

Reading the figures

These studies measure different things in different groups: match injuries per days of play among elite Australian men, compensation claims across a whole country's players, and hand injuries at one English county. Their numbers are not directly comparable, and none of them describes the risk to any individual player.