Musculoskeletal injuries among adolescent cricketers in Zimbabwe

Aim: This is a study to describe and document cricket-related musculoskeletal injuries among high school male cricketers in Zimbabwe during inter-provincial competitions.Methods: This is a retrospective descriptive study.240 male cricketers had been taken for this sample.An edited self-reported musculoskeletal questionnaire for pain assessment was used.The questionnaire was designed to obtain musculoskeletal pain, location of injury, type of injury and injury severity.The SPSS version 20.0 statistical software was used for data entry and statistical analysis.Pearson correlation analysis and Chi-square tests were performed.P-value ≤ 0.05 was regarded as significant.Results: Of the 240 adolescents' high school cricketers surveyed, 81.25% experienced cricket-related musculoskeletal pain and injury within the previous season.There was a 35% prevalence of injuries among cricket players.The knee, lower back and shoulder were the three common most susceptible anatomical sites of musculoskeletal pain and injuries.Bowlers (36%) and batsmen (32%) had sustained highest percentage of injuries and compared to all-rounders (22%) and wicket-keepers (10%). Conclusion:Prevalence of musculoskeletal injury/pain is elevated among adolescents' school boy cricketers.Male cricketers residing in Kwekwe, Zimbabwe experienced a high prevalence of musculoskeletal, ankle, knee, lower back, and shoulder pain.Coaches' conditioning training programs and early rehabilitation by physiotherapists are indispensable to condense the injury rate in high school cricket.