Cricket
Sunned off
Peter Phillips
dos to the effect that cricketers aren't what they used to be.
Instead, I would contend that the gener- al level of fitness amongst county players has never been greater and the main evidence for this assertion has to be the one-day game. In the 1970s players like Graham Barlow and Derek Randall proved themselves to be match winners by virtue of their extraordinary fielding abil- ity; indeed, one suspects that their inclu- sion in international matches on occasions owed as much to this as to their form with the bat. Yet now every county without exception boasts at least one similarly brilliant fielder, and all the other players in the side are expected to charge around the field at maximum velocity. Nobby Stiles would have been proud of the sliding tackles that one commonly sees today, and the next time you are watching a fielder in the so-called 'sweeper' position, just try and calculate how many yards, if not miles, he must run during the course of an innings.
For an informed opinion on these mat- ters I turned to John Deary, the phy- siotherapist at Surrey County Cricket Club. 'JD', as he is known to all at the club, is responsible not only for treating injuries to players, but also for devising fitness programmes to be followed both before and during the season: as he says himself, his job is 'the science within an art form'. He described to me some of the exercises used by the players, including `overloads', where they perform sprints, then sit-ups, then press-ups, and so on without breaks. This suggests that the Surrey team should be in peak condition.
I put to him Jack Bannister's recent theory that players are more injury-prone these days precisely because they have developed their fitness to such a high degree, but JD regards this as being the wrong way to look at the issue. 'A trained athlete is no more liable to injury than a lay person, but he will naturally feel the effects of the same injury to a greater degree,' he said. 'You must also remember', he added, `that precisely because of his fitness, the athlete will always recover more quickly than the unfit person.'
Modern methods of fielding have meant that unlikely injuries, such as grass burns, have had to be treated, and at one county a player finished off a skid by impaling himself on some railings. On the other hand, the relatively recent introduction of helmets and visors has greatly increased safety levels and JD cannot understand why some players are still reluctant to wear them. He suggests that the design of this equipment is some way below the standard he considers possible, but also maintains that the benefits of using it easily out- weighs the temporary inconvenience of getting used to it.
But why have there been so many injuries this season? 'Basically there is too much cricket being played,' JD replied. `The most important thing is that players should have time to rest, but these days there is no space between matches.''I put it to him that this fixture congestion had been around for some years now, but JD had the answer. 'The problem this year has been the weather: it has been so good that there have been no natural breaks when players can recover from the wear and tear of constant cricket.' Isn't it good to know that to all the villains of the summer we can add our old friend the weather?
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