Cricket

Is cricket safe?

For almost everyone who plays, yes. Cricket involves a hard ball bowled at speed at a batter's body, but the death rate is very low and has fallen sharply since helmets became standard. In Australia, where researchers have counted every traumatic cricket death they could find in newspapers since 1858, there were five in the 30 years to 2016. With about 340,000 registered club players, that works out at around 0.5 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary a season, or 0.03 to 0.05 per match, on our estimate.

The more common costs are slower: hamstring strains, bowlers' back stress fractures and broken fingers from catching or being hit.

How cricketers die

The Australian review found 174 cricket-related deaths over 158 years, about half in organised cricket and half in informal games in backyards, streets and on beaches. Deaths peaked at 33 in the 1930s. Among batters killed in organised cricket, 26 died from blows to the head and 13 from blows to the chest, and 9 of those 13 were under 25.

The pattern has changed. None of the five deaths in the last 30 years of that review came from a head injury, which the authors put down to helmets for batters and close fielders. Three were commotio cordis, a blow to the chest that stops the heart, and two were torn arteries in the neck.

The best-known is Phillip Hughes. On 25 November 2014, batting for South Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground, he was hit on the left side of the neck below his helmet. The ball tore his vertebral artery and caused bleeding around the base of the brain, and he died on 27 November. The NSW coroner found it was a "minuscule misjudgment" and no one was to blame. The coroner also found that even the most modern helmet then available would not have protected the spot where he was struck.

Commotio cordis is the other risk. A UK study of 6,000 sudden cardiac deaths found 17 cases from chest blows, 11 in people aged 18 or under, and the most common scenario was a young player hit by a ball in football, cricket or rugby.

How we worked out the micromorts

Five traumatic deaths in 30 years is about 0.17 a year. Australia's 2022–23 census counted 409,642 players in clubs and the Woolworths Cricket Blast entry programme, of whom 69,879 were in Blast, leaving about 340,000 club cricketers. That gives about 0.5 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per player per season. Spread over a club season of 10 to 20 matches, it is 0.03 to 0.05 per match.

This is rough. The death count comes from media reports and may miss cases, and club numbers were lower in earlier decades, which would push the figure up. Sudden cardiac death in middle-aged and older club players is not counted at all. We therefore scored cricket just under our lowest-risk band rather than in it.

How often cricketers get injured

Elite Australian men averaged 64 time-loss injuries per 100 players a season from 2006 to 2016. The hamstring strain was the most common injury, at 8.7 per 100 players a season, a rise linked to the faster T20 format. The most costly was the lumbar stress fracture in fast bowlers, which alone accounted for 15% of all missed playing time. At any moment, 20.6% of fast bowlers were unavailable, against 12.5% of all players.

Recreational cricket is less well measured. In a survey of 2,294 current and former UK cricketers, mostly men with an average age of 52, 47% reported a cricket injury that limited their exercise for at least four weeks, and 10% reported a concussion. Bowlers had two to three times the odds of knee, shoulder and back injuries of batters, and high-performance players were hurt more than recreational ones.

How to play more safely

1. Wear a helmet to the 2013 British Standard whenever you face fast or medium-pace bowling or field close to the bat. Australia's first-class playing conditions have required it since the 2016/17 season.
2. Add a neck guard. Clip-on guards protect the area below the helmet that was struck in Hughes' case; the evidence is limited, but the cost is small.
3. Use a box, gloves and pads, and a chest guard for young batters facing quick bowling.
4. Follow bowling workload limits for young fast bowlers, and see a doctor about back pain that lasts more than a week or two; stress fractures caught early heal better.
5. Warm up and condition the hamstrings, especially in short formats with sprinting between wickets.
6. Make sure someone at the ground knows CPR and where the defibrillator is. For a blow to the chest, minutes decide survival.

How we scored it

Fatality risk (95) is very low: about 0.1 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per match once we add an estimate for unmeasured cardiac deaths to the deaths from ball strikes. Serious injury risk (72) reflects common but mostly non-catastrophic injuries. Controllability (75) is strong because helmets have changed the death record. Rescue (88) is close on most grounds. Cricket scores alongside baseball and well above rugby. Confidence is low because there is no national death register and no per-match injury data for club players.