The prevalence of injuries in women's cricket and its relationship to training practices and physical conditioning

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to determine the injury rate amongst international women cricketers, as well as anatomical areas which are moresusceptible to injuries. A secondary aim was to evaluate how womencricketers prepare themselves for high level competition.Four teams participated in the study and each team comprised of 14 players.The players were required to complete two different questionnaires relating tothe injuries they sustained in a nine month period (eight months prior to the2005 World Cup and one month during the World Cup) and how they preparethemselves physically for competition.The injured players (mean age: 25.1 ± 1.10 years, height: 1.6 ± 0.02m, andweight: 61.9 ± 1.99 kg) yielded an injury rate of 0.48 injuries per player overthe nine month period. The majority of injuries were sustained during theWorld Cup (58%), with most of these injuries occurring in the second week ofcompetition (12 out of 16 injuries). Muscle injuries accounted for most (43%)of the injuries. A large proportion of the injuries occurred in the lower limb,namely 59%. Upper limb and spinal injuries accounted for 26% and 15%,respectively.The top ranked teams seemed to participate more in a periodized trainingschedule and most teams had more than 12 weeks of pre-season training.Endurance training was focused on the most through both pre-season and inseason(39%-47%) during a week of training, while most teams did not spendmuch time on anaerobic training (15%-25%) during the week. Most countrieswere on a par with each other when participating in skills training. The SriLankans did the most pre-season bowling training, namely more than 2.5hours a week. Australia spent more than 3.5 hours on batting during the inseason.Stretching, swimming and low intensity cardiovascular training (27%,20% and 19%) were the major forms of recovery, respectively. Pearson'scorrelation revealed that periodization had an effect on the number of injuriesteams sustained. There was a strong correlation between the amount ofanaerobic training which teams perform during the pre-season and thereworld ranking at the World Cup (r=-0.93; p=0.03).Similar injury prevalence rates were found in this study (48%) and the studyby Kelly et al. (2003) on Australian women's cricket (47%). It also seems auniversal finding that the lower limb is more susceptible to injuries. Thesefindings are also mirrored by those in men's cricket. Women do not seem tosuffer from many spine-related injuries, which is more prevalent among men.The results of this study suggest that players and teams need to review howinternational players condition themselves to play international cricket. Playersneed to train more specifically to the needs of cricket. Women cricketers needto pay special attention to there lower limbs and in particular to strengtheningtheir knees. Core strength is a factor that seemed to be neglected duringtraining, but from this study it is suggested that superior core strength mayprevent players from sustaining injuries.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University