In one of the warmup games ahead of the Women's Cricket World Cup, India's Smriti Mandhana was hit on the head with the ball while batting. Mandhana was assessed by the team doctor and was originally declared fit to continue, only to retire shortly after, following another consultation. 

A report by the International Cricket Council (ICC) found there was no concussion in this case but blows to the head at high speeds are not uncommon in cricket. Just days before, Ishan Kishan was struck on the head by a bouncer while playing for India's men's side against Sri Lanka. Kishan was taken to hospital before being released, although he is still under observation.

Though these incidents were thankfully not fatal, all blows to the head in the sport now inevitably raise memories of Australian batter Phil Hughes. The talented international died in 2014 during a domestic match after a being struck by a fast, bouncing ball that hit him just below the left ear, an area which was, at that point, unprotected by standard batting helmets.

While the rules have changed over the years — bowlers are limited in the number of bouncers (short-pitched deliveries) they can bowl, concussion substitutes have been introduced and equipment and awareness has improved — injuries and questions remain. Even in the most recent men's Ashes series between England and Australia, there were two incidents of players being hit on the head (one seen in the Tweet below).

Since Hughes' death, the ICC has made changes to the safety requirements of modern helmets, which in turn are a vast improvement on the heavy, cumbersome designs of 40 years ago. They are light and can absorb the ball's energy by becoming deformed on impact. But with fast, aggressive bowling firmly still a part of the game the development of safety equipment must keep pace.

Design changes

Yashivan Govender works for Mantodea Tech, a global research and development firm based in Bavaria that is primarily focused on hardware and software intelligence solutions. Part of that work includes researching and monitoring head trauma in cricket, along with the technologies, such as helmets, associated with preventing injuries.

Govender believes head protection technology in cricket needs to be urgently improved, not only because of recent incidents but also because current helmets give players a false sense of security.

"Players are often limited in their defense by taking their eye off the ball when playing a short-pitched delivery for instance and exposing areas of the head that are not protected by a helmet's shell, visor, grill or neck guard," he explained.

"Examples of this would be ducking under a bouncer or turning their head away to avoid being hit by the ball directly, rather than using the bat as the form of defense. In a way the game comes into effect as well, as the player reduces the chance of losing their wicket by rather taking the impact of a ball from a body blow.

"Since the Steven Smith injury in 2019, little development has been made in cricket," Govender continues, referencing the concussion suffered by Australian batsman Steve Smith following a blow to the head by a ball.

Govender has ideas too, such as better ventilated head protectors, custom-engineered visors and even cost-effective solutions for single impact helmet usage, but says affordability can often be an issue.

While safety is undoubtedly the primary concern here, performance is also affected. With the support of Puma, Govender and his team hope they can explore better technologies that turn a helmet into "a performance tool rather than just a protection device."

In The British Medical Journal, a weekly peer-reviewed medical publication, a paper was published in December 2021 investigating player behaviors and performance following helmet strikes in elite cricket. Authors O'Halloran, Goggins and Peirce found that it was the strikes to the helmet that didn't end in concussion that had a greater impact on batting performance as far as three months after impact.

Professor Dr. Ali Irani, a physio for the Indian men's team for 10 years, can recall many occasions when he had to deal with bleeding from broken noses after balls had crept through the space between the visor and the helmet. Now, he feels more can and will be done.

"There is enough space for a new technology for lighter helmets, more productive," Irani told DW. "The box [a hard plastic cup that protects the groin area] is 100 years old. The helmet came 20 years back," Irani says with an ironic laugh. "That tells you something."

Irani was a bit off with his timing - the helmet made an entry in the late 1970s, primarily in response to the famous fast and immolating West Indies bowling attack of the time. But his point about priority remains. Evaluation or consideration of the helmet is too often a matter of consideration after an accident.

Role of the ball

Steve Turnock, CEO of equipment manufacturer County Cricket, believes that the design of the ball also has a role to play.

"The best balls always had five layers of cork and wool wrapped around a small centre. This gave the ball some 'give' which gave the ball a certain feel," Turnock tells DW.

"There used to be a British-Standard testing for balls but this was dropped as no one could be found to do this after the original company stopped it. The current one piece center is much cheaper to produce but harder."

In the ICC rule book, the only stipulation about the ball is about weight and size. For the women's World Cup, the ball has to weigh not less than 4.94 ounces (140 g) nor more than 5.31 ounces (151 g). For the recently played men's Twenty 20 World Cup, it's between 5.5 ounces (155.9 g) and 5.75 ounces (163 g). There is nothing listed about the interior of the ball.

The main hope is that the only big hits at the tournament in New Zealand this month are to the boundary, not the head. Either way, it appears clear that cricket has some more thinking to do when it comes to safety.

Edited by: Matt Pearson