Australian Sport - Powder Puff Cricketers?
My interest in cricket started when I was five years old. To begin with, I couldn't watch it live or on TV, but I devoured books about it and glued myself to radio commentary. From the very beginning, it was the Australian cricketers who generated much of my interest and admiration. Along with the Yorkshire people, they were tough, tough-eyed, tough and determined players, and always, the team that won, and so it continued into adulthood.
From Armstrong, Gregory and MacDonald to Bradman, McCabe, Lindwall and Miller, then Harvey, Burge and Slasher McKay In the seventies, there were the Chappell brothers, Lilly, Marsh and Tommo, in the eighties with Border, then Steve Waugh, Hayden and Ponting, but what has happened on Earth since then?
The appearance of a strong man on the Australian cricket team is as rare as spring in the Outback. Given that cricket is not considered a contact sport, let's take a look at the list of injuries in Australian test cricket over the past few years.
The heavily built Shane Watson tops the list. He started with a torn lateral muscle in 2005. This was followed by shoulder dislocation, soft tissue injuries, calf deformity, hamstring injury, back fracture, another hamstring problem, calf injury, further calf and hamstring injuries, and finally ankle injury. Between 2006 and 2009, he did not play the test.
Over the past seven years, Sean Marsh has had multiple back injuries, elbow surgery, a hamstring injury, and this year a calf problem. He was lucky to have played two games in a row. His brother Mitchell has suffered five separate hamstring injuries in the past two years.
Pat Cummins made his debut at age 18 and won the match award. With a list of injuries too many to mention, he hasn't participated in trials in three years since.
James Pattinson has suffered injuries to his back, legs and ribs in the three years since his debut and has played just 13 tests.
Jackson Byrd played a bit of cricket last year as he suffered from back problems twice.
Mitchell Stark is so fooled that he only seems to be chosen for every alternate test, as too much can be expected to complete successive tests. In the 2012 series against South Africa, the two most important members of the Australian team, Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhouse, took a break from the second test because they were thought to be too tired to skate in the third test. Australia lost the test and the series. Keep in mind that Mitchell Marsh, Stark, Cummins, and Pattinson are not aging cricketers entering their final years, but people who are under 25.
Australia appears to be the hardest hit by this modern phenomenon, but the situation is not much different in any First World country. Despite or perhaps due to the fact that they have a lot of staff looking after them, players usually look significantly more fragile than before. Doctors, physical therapists, fitness coaches, massage therapists and nutritionists don't seem to be very successful at keeping players on the pitch.
Some will say that too much cricket is the cause of all these modern injuries, which is nonsense. In the past, English cricketers played a regular six-month cricket season six days a week, while those playing for the national team often went on winter tours abroad for several months.
Let's put this in context by making comparisons. Tom Richardson, the big fast bowler, has claimed over a thousand wickets over a four-year period since 1894. There is currently no bowler in top-notch cricket who has taken 1,000 wickets in his entire career. Today, the bowler is a rare feat to take 100 wickets in a season, but Derek Shackleton has done it for 20 straight seasons since 1949. The last to take 2,000 wickets in his career was Norman Gifford, over 25 years ago. Alan Border played 153 tests in a row, Ken Suttle 423 games in a row between 1954 and 1969. At the age of 50, Ironmonger played cricket in the Bodyline series. Ramadin and Verity achieved over 120 victories in one test. Tom Richardson, a fast bowling player, regularly rolled over 1,500 overs in a season. The great Australian, versatile, Alan Davidson constantly complained of injury and soreness, but continued to play bowling.
The fragility of the current crop of players makes these figures seem like feats of supermen, but they are not. These players grew up at a time when there were no computers or mobile phones, and for many, television. One found outdoor entertainment and no one, luckily, had ever heard of health and safety regulations. When you started playing cricket at the higher levels, you
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