Fast bowling workload

[shortpitched713]

I'm very interested in this topic, and how this was perceived and considered, historically.

Fast bowlers are the most likely to be injured and break down components of a cricket team, and a part of that is simply overwork over even a long period of time. This stuff is monitored pretty closely in baseball, but pitchers still get injured all the time, so I wonder what the "rules of thumb" are in cricket to protect fast bowler overwork.

My back of the envelope estimation using what I see on pitching workloads, is that for a fully fit fast bowler something like 70-80 "days of cricket played" per year would be a good benchmark. This rule counts all days of ODIs and Tests equally, although obviously there are different dynamics depending on how long the team bat/fields in a Test. T20 days could count as a half day for more recent fast bowlers (although this too is not perfect, as due to warm up, recovery process to bowl fast, over a short period it could be harder to bowl back to back days for T20 than ODIs with a day break.)

Anyway, want to see how many fast bowlers in modernish eras played in the 70-80 range of days per year. And if any even crossed 90 + days in a year , and if that correlated with injury prevalence the next year.

I'd guess that overbowling by this definition happened more in earlier years, and with more FC matches also being played.

Does anyone know good resources where I could find this sort of data, including FC/limited overs cricket? Please share your ideas and thoughts on this topic in this thread!

 

[shortpitched713]

Does anyone know of the top of their head, how many "days" fast bowlers played? Especially before T20 cricket?

 

[Coronis]

Does anyone know of the top of their head, how many "days" fast bowlers played? Especially before T20 cricket?

I mean, I’m sure there’d oftentimes be days in FC or test cricket where the pacers didn’t play for a day due to their team batting for a whole day. You’d also have to individually check each match and see how long they went.

Hadlee in 1984 for example played 34 first class matches, with 6 tests. He also played 33 List A matches with 6 ODIs. So at a minimum you could estimate 70 days bowling. Various amounts of workload every day of course.

A quick check shows roughly the equivalent to two days of bowling per test. (obviously players don’t bowl throughout the entire innings most often).

Not really possible to match that workload these days I think, you’d have to play pretty much every match in the three formats for your team, IPL and county. Don’t know of anyone, particularly a bowler, who does that.

 

[TheJediBrah]

I mean, I’m sure there’d oftentimes be days in FC or test cricket where the pacers didn’t play for a day due to their team batting for a whole day. You’d also have to individually check each match and see how long they went.

Hadlee in 1984 for example played 34 first class matches, with 6 tests. He also played 33 List A matches with 6 ODIs. So at a minimum you could estimate 70 days bowling. Various amounts of workload every day of course.

A quick check shows roughly the equivalent to two days of bowling per test. (obviously players don’t bowl throughout the entire innings most often).

Not really possible to match that workload these days I think, you’d have to play pretty much every match in the three formats for your team, IPL and county. Don’t know of anyone, particularly a bowler, who does that.

That also doesn't tell you how much bowling he did at training. Which would probably vary greatly between players especially back then

I know these days it's calculated down to the number of deliveries for most bowlers though. It's very strictly monitored

 

[shortpitched713]

I mean, I’m sure there’d oftentimes be days in FC or test cricket where the pacers didn’t play for a day due to their team batting for a whole day. You’d also have to individually check each match and see how long they went.

Hadlee in 1984 for example played 34 first class matches, with 6 tests. He also played 33 List A matches with 6 ODIs. So at a minimum you could estimate 70 days bowling. Various amounts of workload every day of course.

A quick check shows roughly the equivalent to two days of bowling per test. (obviously players don’t bowl throughout the entire innings most often).

Not really possible to match that workload these days I think, you’d have to play pretty much every match in the three formats for your team, IPL and county. Don’t know of anyone, particularly a bowler, who does that.

I'm counting every day of actually played cricket as a "day" regardless of if bowling or not. So if there are 4 out of 5 days played in a Test that counts for 4 days. I mean, ultimately that should even out between sometimes more bowling for one team and sometimes more for the other.

I'd imagine that Hadlee season if we say 4 days per FC match would be easily over 90 days of cricket, so definitely on the upper end. I wonder if he had any time off for injury that following year of 85?

 

[Coronis]

I'm counting every day of actually played cricket as a "day" regardless of if bowling or not. So if there are 4 out of 5 days played in a Test that counts for 4 days. I mean, ultimately that should even out between sometimes more bowling for one team and sometimes more for the other.

I'd imagine that Hadlee season if we say 4 days per FC match would be easily over 90 days of cricket, so definitely on the upper end. I wonder if he had any time off for injury that following year of 85?

Well English FC matches at the time were 3 days, which makes up the majority of those matches. Looking at the tests, 5 made it to 5 days and one was over in 3 days. (hard to tell exact times of play due to weather related incidents, not bothering to look further). In 1985 Hadlee played 34 more FC matches (10 tests) and 38 more List A matches (13 ODIs)

 

[peterhrt]

A post from last year.

=============================================================================================
Number of balls delivered by fast bowlers during career. FC + List A + T20.

Walsh 107324, Statham 101946, Trueman 100687, Marshall 96977, Hadlee 83706, Wasim Akram 80110, Tom Richardson 78992, Anderson 72884, McGrath 57999, Lillee 50484, Cummins 25151, Bumrah 24482.

Balls per match: Richardson 221, Statham 178, Lillee 168, Trueman 162, Hadlee 127, Walsh 124, Anderson 121, Marshall 114, McGrath 113,
Wasim Akram 94, Cummins 72, Bumrah 59.
=============================================================================================

 

[TheJediBrah]

Balls per match is a bit of a poor metric when for modern bowlers it includes more shorter format

Of course someone who never played T20s and barely ODIs is going to have a way higher balls per match than Cummins or Bumrah

 

[Coronis]

Balls per match is a bit of a poor metric when for modern bowlers it includes more shorter format

Of course someone who never played T20s and barely ODIs is going to have a way higher balls per match than Cummins or Bumrah

To get a more accurate picture you could divide balls by years played (won’t be perfect, but more informative perhaps)

For example Richardson 5642 vs Hadlee 4185 vs Anderson 2915 vs Bumrah 1939

 

[Kenneth Viljoen]

In my experience of watching cricket , fast bowlers tend to be more injury prone when they are reluctant to get through a workload or are wrapped up in cotton wool for redball cricket..

I think the perfect role models for youngsters of today is Starc, Cummins and Hazlewood ..

Sure they have had their injury issues, but they have understood that they needed to be soldiers, to get through workloads for the team, they could have easily taken it easy and play more T20 stuff , but their commitment to the redball format will be a good example for Australian fast bowlers to follow.

 

[Stefan9]

In my experience of watching cricket , fast bowlers tend to be more injury prone when they are reluctant to get through a workload or are wrapped up in cotton wool for redball cricket..

I think the perfect role models for youngsters of today is Starc, Cummins and Hazlewood ..

Sure they have had their injury issues, but they have understood that they needed to be soldiers, to get through workloads for the team, they could have easily taken it easy and play more T20 stuff , but their commitment to the redball format will be a good example for Australian fast bowlers to follow.

Easy to do when you are on a CA contract to do compared to a none big 3 deal.

 

[shortpitched713]

Well English FC matches at the time were 3 days, which makes up the majority of those matches. Looking at the tests, 5 made it to 5 days and one was over in 3 days. (hard to tell exact times of play due to weather related incidents, not bothering to look further). In 1985 Hadlee played 34 more FC matches (10 tests) and 38 more List A matches (13 ODIs)

Okay so Hadlee was just a machine who defied limitations of workload management.

Imran, of course, suffered later in career due to bowling workload, and I'd expect his case is more typical for someone with the requisite power and pace generated by a featured quick bowler.

 

[ataraxia]

In my experience of watching cricket , fast bowlers tend to be more injury prone when they are reluctant to get through a workload or are wrapped up in cotton wool for redball cricket..

I think the perfect role models for youngsters of today is Starc, Cummins and Hazlewood ..

Sure they have had their injury issues, but they have understood that they needed to be soldiers, to get through workloads for the team, they could have easily taken it easy and play more T20 stuff , but their commitment to the redball format will be a good example for Australian fast bowlers to follow.

You've got the causation the wrong way round. The much more sensible explanation is that fast bowlers who are wrapped up in cotton wool are more injury-prone in the first place.

 

[shortpitched713]

In my experience of watching cricket , fast bowlers tend to be more injury prone when they are reluctant to get through a workload or are wrapped up in cotton wool for redball cricket..

I think the perfect role models for youngsters of today is Starc, Cummins and Hazlewood ..

Sure they have had their injury issues, but they have understood that they needed to be soldiers, to get through workloads for the team, they could have easily taken it easy and play more T20 stuff , but their commitment to the redball format will be a good example for Australian fast bowlers to follow.

Respectfully, I find this to be a horrible take. It's mixing correlation with causation. The ones who need to curtail workloads and be wrapped in cotton wool are the ones who are having more troubles with injury, but there's no way that treatment is actually causing their injuries.

What would probably be better for any cricket organizing estqblishment with younger players would be to identify early in a young quick's career if they have a tendency for picking up injuries and be proactive in working on their action, for instance to nip that in the bud.

Fast bowlers are, if left to their own devices in their development early on, going to gravitate towards maximizing pace and the stress on their bodies in order to trouble batsmen of higher quality as they go uo the ranks. If there's not good coaching and processes early to counteract that trend in development, then the epidemic of quick bowler injuries will be ever increasing with time over the years.

And obviously younger bowlers should be able to handle a bit more overs workload early in their career, but the concept of workload management should certainly not be seen as a dirty word, and part of an injury prevention mechanism.

As far as T20s go, I think it's natural for those bowlers struggling with the workload and potential injuries of full day cricket matches to gravitate towards the format. I don't think it's necessarily the panacea they are looking for, however as that format tends to have less break days between matches compared to ODIs. Obviously it's of little use in trying to develop young Test and even ODI players to have them play more of a format which isn't even testing their ability to handle longer spells of bowling in a day. But it can have it's uses for veterans who are struggling for fitness and just need to retain match sharpness between international duty matches in the linger formats.

 

[Coronis]

Okay so Hadlee was just a machine who defied limitations of workload management.

Imran, of course, suffered later in career due to bowling workload, and I'd expect his case is more typical for someone with the requisite power and pace generated by a featured quick bowler.

cbf checking now but I don’t think it was only Hadlee.

An alternate one might be Kapil Dev, he’s often praised for his longevity and almost never missing a test. iirc he conversely barely played county cricket. More loyalty to country than county!

 

[Thala_0710]

cbf checking now but I don’t think it was only Hadlee.

An alternate one might be Kapil Dev, he’s often praised for his longevity and almost never missing a test. iirc he conversely barely played county cricket. More loyalty to country than county!

Kapil played a mix of both Ranji and County cricket. In the 70s, he was playing Ranji cricket regularly, and in the early 80s he had county stints with Northamptonshire and Worcestershire where he racked up a total of 40 appearances. Think he only played a few ranji games post 1985 and ended up with a total of 275 FC matches. (Compared to Hadlee's 342).

 

[Coronis]

Kapil played a mix of both Ranji and County cricket. In the 70s, he was playing Ranji cricket regularly, and in the early 80s he had county stints with Northamptonshire and Worcestershire where he racked up a total of 40 appearances. Think he only played a few ranji games post 1985 and ended up with a total of 275 FC matches. (Compared to Hadlee's 342).

Yeah I’d call 2 seasons barely lol.

 

[Blenkinsop]

What would probably be better for any cricket organizing estqblishment with younger players would be to identify early in a young quick's career if they have a tendency for picking up injuries and be proactive in working on their action, for instance to nip that in the bud.

Fast bowlers are, if left to their own devices in their development early on, going to gravitate towards maximizing pace and the stress on their bodies in order to trouble batsmen of higher quality as they go uo the ranks. If there's not good coaching and processes early to counteract that trend in development, then the epidemic of quick bowler injuries will be ever increasing with time over the years.

The trouble with this is that the science of identifying and remedying possible causes of injury in a bowler's action is not very exact. It was thought that Jimmy Anderson's action was problematic and the EBC spent years trying to remodel it. Once he went back to his original action he proved uniquely enduring. And there have been lots of cases where bowlers have changed their action following injury and just haven't been as good afterwards.

Also, if you're going to identify issues early in a quick bowler's career, that really means in their mid teens, and how many teenagers are working with elite coaches who are up to speed with all the biomechanics and so on?

 

[Line and Length]

"Also, if you're going to identify issues early in a quick bowler's career, that really means in their mid teens, and how many teenagers are working with elite coaches who are up to speed with all the biomechanics and so on?"

This is so very true. I recall Jeff Thomson relating how he taught his son to bowl, using his own self-taught technique. After returning from one of his talk tours, he was horrified that coaches had modified his son's action resulting in loss of speed and back soreness. I'm not sure what level his son was playing but the fact he had a bowling coach would suggest it was at a reasonable grade level.

 

[shortpitched713]

"Also, if you're going to identify issues early in a quick bowler's career, that really means in their mid teens, and how many teenagers are working with elite coaches who are up to speed with all the biomechanics and so on?"

This is so very true. I recall Jeff Thomson relating how he taught his son to bowl, using his own self-taught technique. After returning from one of his talk tours, he was horrified that coaches had modified his son's action resulting in loss of speed and back soreness. I'm not sure what level his son was playing but the fact he had a bowling coach would suggest it was at a reasonable grade level.

I can't imagine the conversation the coach had.

Coach: Who taught you how to bowl, lad?

Kid: My dad, Jeff Thomson.

Coach: .... But nah kid, you're doing it all wrong, do it like this...