Injury surveillance in cricket

This issue of the BJSM contains three cricket injury surveillance studies, including the first published multicountry surveillance project. Cricket1 narrowly preceded football2 and rugby union3 to the publication of the sport's first consensus statement of injury definitions in 2005. A major distinction between the statements was that the authors of the cricket statement chose to focus on match time-loss injuries only4 rather than ‘all reported’ injuries5 ,6 (which was the perspective chosen by football and rugby union). One of the reasons for cricket statement focusing on the match time-loss injuries was that owing to limited resources being devoted to injury surveillance in cricket, compliance would presumably be easier if there were fewer reporting requirements. Despite this, it has taken 8 years for the first multicountry study7 (and ironically both time-loss and non-time-loss injuries have been reported). During these years, T20 cricket has become far more prominent than it was and consequently many players have multiple contracts with different teams in a given year, so the original definitions probably …