Health warning: Cricket can kill you!

How someone hasn't been killed already has defied all logic.

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OPINION: HERE'S A cheery thought. How long do you think it will take until someone's killed by the ball at a cricket match? Or should that be, how many people do you think will need to be badly injured before authorities wake up and start smelling their occupational health and safety obligations? Before they realise there's an urgent need to educate Kiwi crowds, and in particular, warn patrons about the dangers of not supervising the kids.

If the explosion of the Twenty20 format has taught us anything, it's that cricket is no longer a sport at which you can read a book or enjoy a slumber under the morning newspaper. The idea of allowing young children to play amongst themselves near the boundary edge, as we've seen at many domestic fixtures this summer, is not much different from sending them out to frolic on a busy road. It's not a question of if; it's merely a question of when.

With bigger crowds, smaller grounds, and a priority on six-hitting, inattention is akin to playing Russian roulette. Watching the recent domestic Twenty20 competition has been like waiting for the inevitable. It's as if New Zealand Cricket and ground authorities haven't yet recognised their duty, morally or legally, to make their clients more aware. It's not good enough to print disclaimers on the back of a ticket and hope for the best.

Cricketers at an early age are taught the principles of safety, usually at the time they graduate to the hard ball. The golden rule at practice is to be always watching at the moment of delivery. Do what you like in between but always be looking before the point of impact. Anyone familiar with the routines of net practice will have a story to tell about people who have ignored this principle. To be standing in front of a net and not watching is to be asking for major reconstructive surgery.

Clearly, however, many of those who swarm to cricket's most popular formats, Twenty 20 and one-day internationals, are not burdened by the same concern. There seems to be a belief that the odds are acceptable, and you can almost understand why. How someone hasn't been killed already has defied all logic. Sixes are flying everywhere and folk are lying down or resting against their partners, chatting amongst themselves; walking away with their backs turned or sitting hunched over, texting on their mobiles.

There will be those who will regard these concerns as over-the-top. They may be right. After all, there have been only about five people killed by the ball in American baseball since 1900, including two spectators struck by fielders' wild throws. Of those, only one has occurred in a major league game: in 1970, 13-year-old Alan Fish was hit by a line drive at Dodger Stadium and died a few days later. Although that doesn't quite tell the entire story.

More recently there was the case of the Tulsa Drillers' hitting coach Mike Coolbaugh being killed by a foul ball during a minor league game against Arkansas in 2007. Earlier that year a 17-year-old was killed after being struck in the back of the head during a high school batting practice. Apart from that, however, most of the worst impacts seem to have only resulted in serious injury. For some reason the younger kids appear the most vulnerable. It's like they don't even see it coming.

LAST YEAR, Ohio four-year-old Luke Holko needed brain surgery after being struck on the back of the head. He has reportedly starting to walk and talk again. The year before, Texas five-year-old Maddie Emerson needed surgery to release pressure on her brain after taking a foul ball to the swede. One lawsuit alleges that, in a five-year period at Fenwick Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, injuries caused to spectators by foul balls numbered between 36 and 53 a year.

And, as much as some people must feel extremely fortunate after a near miss, there are times when others must simply feel desperately out of luck. Like the time in 1957 when the Phillies' Richie Ashburn hit the same woman spectator in the head twice in the same turn at bat. The first foul ball broke Mice Roth's nose; second sconed her again as she was being carried out on a stretcher. Never mind the mother of Indians' pitcher Bob Feller: knocked out cold on Mother's Day.

Baseball authorities, however, have at least been forced by the threat of litigation to take more active preventive measures. Signs are posted around stadiums warning of the need to be vigilant, and safety announcements are broadcast to the crowds at regular intervals. Even so, a heated debate is still spreading through the US about the need to force ground owners to accept more responsibility and to better safeguard their patrons.

NZC needs to be moving quickly in the same direction before the worse happens. Signage and public address announcements are all very well, but with so much ground to be made up, and so many cricket patrons oblivious to the inherent dangers of a cricket match, it's high time they started a campaign with regular radio and even television exposure. Those in charge of a workplace are responsible for the safety of all those within it, after all.

The luck isn't going to last forever; we can guarantee ourselves of that. Sooner or later, if this issue isn't properly addressed, instead of reading about the tragic and awful accidents in American baseball we'll have our own horror stories to contend with.

It's true; accidents do happen. But they don't have to be compulsory.

rboock@xtra.co.nz

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