Professional Cricketer Research Articles

UK professional male cricketers’ mental health and support experiences: A qualitative exploration

Recently, UK professional cricket has seen tragic events, powerful testimonies, and increased media attention surrounding mental health, yet the experiences of players and the support they receive has continued to receive limited academic attention. Our study bridged that gap by qualitatively examining UK male professional cricketers’ experiences of mental health and mental health support. Through interviews with 15 current and former male UK professional cricketers, who had an average of 14 years’ experience, three key themes were developed: (1) The emotional rollercoaster of a career in professional cricket, (2) local vs national level mental health support and, (3) nourishing vs malnourishing player’s mental health. Firstly, a career in professional cricket had highs and lows that both stimulated a player’s mental health and led to mental health issues and impaired performance. Secondly, while national level mental health support was endorsed, the support was found to be reactive. Due to the continued perceived stigma and lack of openness at the local (County) level, players reported feeling uncomfortable to reach out for support. Lastly, by providing stability with contracts, helping players prepare for and through transitions, encouraging the development of healthy habits, and coaches communicating effectively and investing in their relationships with players, organizations have the potential to nourish, protect, and enhance professional cricketers’ mental health throughout their career. Our study has important implications for counties by highlighting the role and responsibility they have in breaking down stigma, creating an open and supportive environment around mental health and nourishing player’s mental health experiences. Lay Summary: Interviews with 15 male UK professional cricketers revealed the importance of local and national cricket clubs supporting and protecting player mental health. Specifically, via reducing perceived mental health stigma, providing stability with contracts, helping players prepare for transitions, encouraging healthy habit development and effective coach relationships and communication. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE Organizations at the local (County) level must recognize the key role and responsibility they have in breaking down the current stigma that exists around mental health and work toward creating an open and supportive environment where players can feel supported and comfortable seeking out mental health support. Organizations can also help protect and enhance professional cricketer’s mental health throughout their career. To achieve this, organizations at the local level should provide stability with contracts, help players prepare for and through transitions, encourage the development of healthy habits from an early age and lastly, coaches should communicate effectively and openly and invest in their relationships with players.

Practical perspective of cricket ball swing

A cricket ball has an encircling, stitched seam proud from the leather, separating the surface into two distinct hemispheres. When angled, this seam is exploited by the skilful bowler to create an asymmetry in the viscous boundary layer and the ball will swing. In this article, the fluid dynamics of both conventional swing and reverse swing are explained and demonstrated. Using balls worn under match conditions and insight from a professional cricketer, factors affecting swing were tested experimentally in a wind tunnel. The surface condition of the ball was demonstrated to have a substantial effect on the amount of swing: conventional swing was most obvious for a new, polished cricket ball and the swing reduced as the ball accumulated wear as would happen as the match progresses; reverse swing was seen at high bowling speeds with a worn ball. Humidity in isolation was shown to have no significant effect on swing, dispelling a long-standing myth in the cricketing community. A grid was used to simulate atmospheric convective micro-turbulence above a cricket pitch on a hot day without cloud cover; strong evidence suggested that turbulence inhibits the fragile conditions necessary for laminar flow and prevents swing.

Russell Morris

Angewandte Chemie International EditionVolume 55, Issue 31 p. 8794-8794 Author ProfileFree Access Russell Morris First published: 25 February 2016 https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201601281Citations: 2AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Graphical Abstract “When I was eighteen I wanted to be a professional cricketer. My favorite drink is cup of tea (how very British!) ...” This and more about Russell Morris can be found on page 8794. 1 Table 1. Russell E. Morris Date of birth: June 8, 1967 Position: Professor of Materials Chemistry, University of St Andrews E-mail: rem1@st-andrews.ac.uk Homepage: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/chemistry/contact/academic/#rem1 Education: 1989 BA in chemistry, University of Oxford 1992 DPhil supervised by Professor Anthony K. Cheetham, University of Oxford Awards: 2008 Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; 2012 Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales; 2012 Brian Mercer Award for Innovation, Royal Society; 2015 Peter Day Award for Materials, Royal Society of Chemistry Current research interests: Zeolites; metal–organic frameworks; gas storage and delivery for medicine; quantum spin liquids Hobbies: Playing the guitar (badly!), playing tennis (also badly!) When I was eighteen I wanted to be a professional cricketer. My favorite drink is a cup of tea (how very British!). In the future I see myself still enjoying my job. The most important thing I learned from my students is how they manage their supervisor. The principal aspect of my personality is optimism. Even when things go badly, success is always just around the corner (I hope!) My favorite musicians are Queen or maybe Billy Bragg, or my current favorite Caro Emerald—too many favorites! The natural talent I would like to be gifted with is for music. It must be a great thrill to captivate an audience with a virtuoso performance. I am waiting for the day when someone will discover a foolproof way to teach old-timers (like me) how to use social media. If I could be any age I would be 25—old enough to know better but young enough not to care too much. The secret of being a successful scientist is creativity and not being scared to ask a stupid question. My favorite molecules are polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes—who couldn't love them with a name like that. My science “heroes” are my research group—they put up with a lot! My 5 top papers: References 1“Synthesis of ‘unfeasible’ zeolites”: M. Mazur, P. S. Wheatley, M. Navarro, W. J. Roth, M. Položij, A. Mayoral, P. Eliášová, P. Nachtigall, J. Čejka, R. E. Morris, Nat. Chem. 2016, 8, 58. (Shows how we can get around the limitations of hydrothermal synthesis.) 2“Zeolites with Continuously Tuneable Porosity”: P. S. Wheatley et al., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 13210; Angew. Chem. 2014, 126, 13426. (Continuous control of the pore sizes in a family of zeolites all the way from small pores to extra-large ones.) 3“A family of zeolites with controlled pore size prepared using a top-down method”: W. J. Roth et al., Nat. Chem. 2013, 5, 628 (Reports the ADOR process: how to disassemble a parent zeolite into its constituent parts before reassembling them into a family of new structures.) 4“Protecting group and switchable pore-discriminating adsorption properties of a hydrophilic–hydrophobic metal–organic framework”: M. I. H. Mohideen et al., Nat. Chem. 2011, 3, 304. (We can control the adsorption into two channels of the same MOF, and can close one channel down completely by using the right set of conditions.) 5“Chemically blockable transformation and ultraselective low-pressure gas adsorption in a non-porous metal organic framework”: B. Xiao et al., Nat. Chem. 2009, 1, 289. (A MOF that only adsorbs one particular gas, nitric oxide, and can be used in medical applications.) Citing Literature Volume55, Issue31July 25, 2016Pages 8794-8794 ReferencesRelatedInformation

A man on the make: the business of being Bradman

Bradman loved numbers. He knew the value of big scores and how they could be used to leverage business and cricket opportunities. As this chapter shows, Bradman used his unprecedented ability to compile big scores to secure employment opportunities and promote his own business ventures. A boundless self-promoter in the early 1930s, he was unpopular with many members of the Australian team who tolerated him because of his run-scoring abilities. When his business interests were challenged by Australian cricket administrators, Bradman repeatedly threatened to take his bat to the lucrative northern English leagues. As the Australian Board of Control recognized his great value at the gate, it was loath to lose its major drawcard. As a consequence, in 1934 Bradman leveraged a deal with Board member, Harry Hodgetts and the South Australian Cricket Association. Under the deal, Bradman became a part-time stockbroker's clerk in provincial Adelaide and a full-time professional cricketer. By the mid-1930s, Bradman may have been promoted as the boy from Bowral but in reality he was a man on the make.

Triangular Fibrocartilage Complex Injury in Professional Cricketers

ABSTRACT Triangular fibrocartilage complex (TFCC) is a complex of multiple ligaments and cartilages at the ulnar end of the wrist. Injury of TFCC is commonly seen in sportsmen such as tennis players, cricketers, golfers and gymnasts. The typical presentation is pain radiating along the ulnar side of the hand, and is often accompanied by fracture of the ulnar styloid. Despite being a common injury, its knowledge remains largely unknown. This leads to a huge number of cases remaining undiagnosed and thus untreated and unreported. The authors report a TFCC injury in a professional Cricketer in an attempt to create awareness of this common sports injury. How to cite this article Talib U, Saleem S. Triangular Fibrocartilage Complex Injury in Professional Cricketers. J Postgrad Med Edu Res 2015;49(4):204-208.

ON BEING INTRODUCED

4 5 R O N B E I N G I N T R O D U C E D P A U L W E S T Once the person introducing me bit his tongue so badly that blood poured over his necktie onto the index card on which he had inscribed my entire life. Another time one of the more combative younger poets introduced a colleague in terms so stark and acidulous the speaker seemed struck dumb: ‘‘If I were you,’’ our host opined, ‘‘I’d go do something else, not listen to this genius’s gibberish ; he screws better than he writes.’’ One day at the University of Tulsa, my introducer actually read aloud my entire curriculum vitae, taking up some thirty minutes, smitten at the outset by parroty echolalia and devastating nerves. Even as he spoke, on and on, I ran a 2B pencil through paragraphs of comparable length in my speech. Indeed, given time enough, we could have exchanged roles completely; the introduction would have supplanted the speech. I cannot think why someone has not attempted this – suddenly the audience twigs it that the introducer is the real draw after all and the ostensible speaker is a figment, a ghost who will slink away when no one is looking. Stanley Elkin, never the master of the gentlest turn of phrase, used to pro√er an introduction of such glistening eloquence, such magisterial authority, such daunting length that the speaker, 4 6 W E S T Y humbled, only mumbled, aching to get o√ and away, not having been warned what he or she would have to follow. In the same neck of the woods, St. Louis, on the campus of Washington University , William H. Gass used to do a similar thing, reading an introduction even more resplendent than anything of Elkin’s, achieving something between encyclopedia entry and red-hot book review, leaving you more or less to flounder (or shine) in the afterglow, but with one plus: he left behind him a cloud of menthol and eucalyptus from the big to√ee on which he had sucked to clear his tubes. So even as you trotted up into that aroma and began, your sinuses behaved, and you excelled. Or choked by newly descended phlegm, you coughed on your finest phrases. Gass, that formidable introducer, had (no doubt still has) another trick, however. Having studied temptation, he lays on something you cannot resist, a treat for having sung for your supper – in my case a huge iced chocolate cake, perhaps to keep me from speaking ever again, such was its sleek sweet softness. You see how, as memory spins and serves things up, the worst evokes the best, calling in from the periphery of aversion the silliest goings-on. I have been introduced, in my time, as a former test pilot, a professional cricketer, and an expert on cheese. I have had the introducer who interrupts you halfway through to pose a question, the introducer who fell o√ his chair, having been driven to sleep by my speech, and the one who set me up as Paul Weiss. You never know what’s coming, what’s in the water, whether the reading light will work. Once at Binghamton University, mine host led me up several flights of steep stairs so that I arrived too breathless to speak, not that it mattered, anyway; we entered a room wholly in darkness, with nonetheless a murmur of people at the front and who knew how many behind them. The power had failed. So had the mike, the lights. He nonetheless maneuvered me into a chair in what I recalled as a Bob Hoskins motion from The Cotton Club (in which movie he is always positioning people) and began his introduction without a pause, getting the facts right and even paying tribute in the dark to things I’d written. I was then supposed to get on with my reading: no flashlight, no academic flare. For a few moments I fudged in the dark, heard appreciative glottal sounds, and stopped dead. Then the lights came on in dazzling anticlimax. O N B E I N G I N T...

‘Ten Drunks and a Parson’?: The Victorian Professional Cricketer Reconsidered

By focusing largely upon the West Riding of Yorkshire and its contemporary local press, this paper examines the role of the professional player in nineteenth century cricket. It examines how they developed careers in cricket, as the sport's popularity grew on a local, national and international basis. These broadening opportunities are related to the predominance of professionals before the 1870s, when they contributed much to the way the sport was to subsequently develop. The paper then discusses why cricket's historiography has commonly viewed early professionals only as self-interested and ill disciplined individuals. This is related to the predominance of amateur values in cricket, which meant that, although tolerated, the sport's professionals were subjugated by a set of restrictive regulations between the 1870s and the 1960s. Finally, it is suggested that by looking beyond cricket's mainstream nineteenth century source material, a more accurate assessment of the game's development can be made.

The birth of the professional cricketer's benefit match

The birth of the professional cricketer's benefit match

The Professional Cricketer in England in the Nineteenth Century

The growth of cricket as a major participant and spectator sport in the nineteenth century was due to many factors as yet not fully under stood or explained. It is not the intention of this article to go into the reasons for the growth of cricket as such, but to examine a section of its workforce, the professional cricketer, who was engaged at two major levels in the game. He played in the increasing number of county cricket and international teams that drew the crowds to such grounds as The Oval, Trent Bridge and Lord's, and he taught the arts and crafts of the game to the growing number of preparatory schools, public schools and local clubs who played cricket for both recreative and moral reasons. The professional cricketer's story is an intrinsically interesting one in terms of wages, life style and customs, but it also sheds light upon nineteenth-century attitudes in regard to class, respectability and the changing position of working men during the century. For the pro fessional cricketer was a working man. His origins were 'agricultural labouring', changing to 'craftsman', as England became more indus trialised. His wages were low, but opportunities for advancement were there, to be taken by a few; his life was subject to the hazards affecting all working men: ill-health, accidents, drink, improvidence and destitution for self and family in old age. The boom in cricket, reflected in 'gates', publicity and the beginnings of a 'star' system did, however, give unique opportunities to this particular working man just as pro fessional football, music hall, and in our own day pop music have offered avenues to success in the entertainment industries created by and for an industrial society. The origins of cricket are obscure, but by the eighteenth century it was a flourishing game in the south of England. Aristocrats such as the