Watch out for flying balls

OPINION: Sometimes I chew over a subject for ages before writing about it. One such subject has been the danger of flying cricket balls, writes Joe Bennett this week.

For with the advent of twenty20, the cricketing equivalent of two-minute noodles, the ball flies into the crowd with the regularity of shells into World War I trenches, and it is only a matter of time before a spectator finds one with his name on it.

Throughout the summer months my giant throbbing brain has chewed on this horrific possibility, as a cow chews on the cud.

This week I felt ready to address the subject in print. Then I opened the Sunday paper and found that Richard Boock had beaten me to it. He'd pulled the cud out from under my feet.

My first reaction was to feel that I'd been gazumped. But then I realised that Mr Boock and I were actually sharing the chewing duties. He had raised awareness of a danger. Now I would step in and provide the solution.

Together we'd save cricket lovers from what is known to baseball crowds as the splat.

My first thought was an air raid siren. A well-struck six spends several seconds in the air, giving time for a siren to sound. But, having warned people of danger, you have to offer them refuge, and the cost of building multiple air-raid shelters might prove prohibitive.

Hi-tech seats were the next idea to emerge from this throbbing cerebellum. Again the outlay would be considerable but the seats would pay for themselves in the long run by appealing to the more timorous demographic.

Spectators would be strapped into these seats for the duration of the game like astronauts at takeoff. When the siren sounded, a kevlar headguard, like one of those hair-driers under which women read magazines, would slide over the patron's skull.

Nevertheless there would remain the risk of a blow to torso, limb or genitals, with potentially debilitating consequences.

So I hired a military hardware company to investigate the possibility of installing a detonator inside the ball and generating an electro-magnetic force field from the boundary rope. As the ball passed through the force field the detonator would be activated, the ball would disintegrate and instead of being brained the crowd would be showered with harmless confetti, and perhaps chocolates. But the prototypes proved unreliable. Many balls exploded at unscheduled moments during play, causing significant alarm to players.

A neat solution suggested by a techie friend was to place spectators in one stadium while the game was played in another. The action would then be relayed to the spectators in real time via giant 3D screens. But I felt that this would be unlikely to appeal to crowds unless the images were convincingly realistic holograms. I did try to interest Weta Workshop in the idea but they were too busy dealing with Hollywood moguls hoping to turn corny screenplays into corny box office hits through the use of special effects.

This solution may be the way of the future, I suspect, but in the meantime something has to be done to cover the ICC's legal liabilities. In these enlightened times we simply cannot make the neolithic assumption that people who go to watch a game of cricket understand that it may involve a cricket ball and that if they don't fancy the risk of being hit they should stay away. Personal responsibility is yesterday's thinking.

So in the best modern style we're going to have to have signs, and lots of them. Patrons must be given the information they need to make an informed choice.

Every cricket ground will have to install an electronic board that announces the statistical likelihood of a spectator being a. killed, b. paralysed, c. maimed, or d. merely put in hospital. (Figures will be based on stats from around the globe and constantly updated from a central database hosted by the International Cricket Council.)

To allow cricket lovers to make an even more informed decision the board will also present the comparable risk of being a. struck by lightning, b. blown up by terrorists, c. bitten by katipo spiders (which just love to nest in old stadium seating) or d. involved in a car crash on the way to a game.

And, as a final thought, the ICC should run a TAB on splats. Huge prizes will go to the punter who correctly guesses the date and location of a splat along with the precise degree of incapacity generated, thus enhancing cricket's appeal for the gambler. And some of the profits from the scheme will go to rehabilitating the victim. In other words everyone's a winner.

There, that's what happens when two giant throbbing brains apply themselves constructively to an urgent safety concern.

» Joe Bennett is an English-born travel writer and columnist who lives in New Zealand with dogs. His columns are syndicated in newspapers throughout New Zealand.

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