Annual incidence and prevalence of injuries in elite male academy cricketers: A 4-year prospective cohort study

Objectives: The aim of this study was to describe the epidemiology of injuries; time-loss and non-time loss, in elite male academy cricket. Design: Prospective cohort analysis. Methods: Annual injury incidence and prevalence from all cricket related injuries were calculated for 348 male academy players (under-13 to under-18) from the 18 First-Class County Cricket clubs in England and Wales across four years (2017/18, 2018/19, 2020/21 and 2021/22), in accordance with the updated consensus statement for injury surveillance methods in cricket. Results: The average annual injury incidence was 115.0 injuries/100 players/year, with similar rates between time-loss (59.7 injuries/100 players/year) and non-time loss injury incidence (55.3 injuries/100 players/year). On average, 8.5 ​% of players were unavailable on any given day of the year due to injury. Match injury incidence (48.8 injuries/100 players/year) was higher than cricket-based training (25.2 injuries/100 players/year), gym-based training, illness, and ‘other’ injury incidences. Match bowling was the activity associated with the highest total (17.7 injuries/100 players/year), time-loss (10.3 injuries/100 players/year) and non-time loss (7.4 injuries/100 players/year) injury incidence. The lumbar spine was the body location most frequently injured (15.3 injuries/100 players/year) and was the most prevalent body location injured (2.9 ​% of players). Conclusions: The findings from this study provide, robust evidence of the extent of the injury problem in elite male academy cricketers. Bowling poses the greatest risk to players and the lumbar spine is the most common and prevalent injury location.