How batsmen survive weapons of mass destruction

It's important to play cricket with all the available modern equipment to stay fully protected © Getty Images

A cricket ball in the hands of a Shoaib Akhtar or Brett Lee can be a weapon of mass destruction. These pacemen could fire the ball at 160 kmph. Batsmen have microsecond to judge the pace of the ball, movement in the air and off the wicket and the steep bounce to provide their answer. The degree of difficulty is such, that often it’s a case of survival for the batsmen.

When the opposition have two or more high-quality pacemen, there is no respite from either end. Some of the greatest teams in history have hunted with a pair of high-quality fast bowlers – Australia with Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, Pakistan with Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis etc. The West Indies under Clive Lloyd posed a lethal four-pronged danger with Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Colin Croft (and later Malcolm Marshall) causing unbelievable mayhem around the world. 

These fast bowlers could inflict the fear of God in atheists! They brought such incredible excellence to the art of fast bowling that protection of life and limb was the uppermost thought on batsmen’s minds than scoring runs!

The helmet and visor/grill are the biggest protective gear to shield the missiles from causing grievous injury to head and face. Mike Gatting had his nose rearranged by a hostile delivery from Malcolm Marshall in a Test in the West Indies in 1986. Videos and pictures of that incident still sends shivers of the viewers. When he went to pick up the ball after injuring the batsman,Marshall said that he was aghast to see a piece of Gatting’s nose bone on the ball! That injury happened DESPITE the batsman wearing a helmet. What it did not have was a visor or grill to prevent the ball from crashing on to the face.

It’s important, thus, to play cricket with all the available modern equipment to stay fully protected.