Back to the Future at Yorkshire County Cricket Club

Fair Warning.

No time travelling cars in this article (if you noticed the ‘Back to the Future’ reference in the article title), though come to think of it, there is a Doc!

So…on my roaming around the web, I noticed reference to the Yorkshire Pride Appeal funding research into causes of back injuries at Yorkshire County Cricket Club.

It tinkled a vague bell in the dark recesses of my memory bank but felt like the kind of article that Cricket Yorkshire should be all over – so I got on the phone to Ian Dews, Director of Cricket Development at Yorkshire County Cricket Club, to find out more.

Back injuries for bowlers, fast bowlers in particular, may be neatly filed under ‘occupational hazard’ but the causes of stress fractures are still a relatively unknown area of sports science.

It can be attributed to all sorts of things from the stresses caused by bowling actions to the muscle tone or lack thereof or role of diet and calcium deficiency to name a few.

Four years ago, Yorkshire County Cricket Club began a programme of scanning a cohort of their young fast bowlers using 3D bone density scanners to build up more intelligence and try to pinpoint patterns that they hope, over time, will minimise these serious injuries.

This development work continues today and in the interview below, Ian looks back at the case of Jonny Moxon who was ticking all the boxes in terms of bowling action and fitness but still had a back injury that was baffling.

The county may not be able to extrapolate anything meaningful from this data for years to come in the search for patterns and solid conclusions but it illustrates their mindset in exhausting all avenues.

As for The Yorkshire Pride Lottery, it is through their generosity, funded by those giving £2 a week to enter weekly cash prize draws and therby supporting the Yorkshire Cricket Academy, the Yorkshire Cricket Foundation and the current charity partner (Children’s Heart Surgery Fund for 2017) that these expensive bone density scans can happen when needed.