Sydney, Oct 16: Aiming to prolong the careers of fast bowlers, the Australian Institute of Sport has begun a cricket research project investigating the injuries sustained by male and female fast-bowlers. "Anecdotally, male and female fast-bowlers tend to sustain different types of injuries, and the purpose of this research is to try and understand the reason for that. The results may help us determine ways to prepare fast-bowlers with fitness programmes, and assist with technique improvement based on a number of individual components such as body type," said cricket Australia's Sports Science officer Marc Portus who is heading the project.

"That information becomes particularly valuable for coaches and athletes to try to prevent and reduce the number of injuries sustained by fast-bowlers and perhaps even prolong their careers," he said. The research team will collect data over the next two weeks from 30 medium-to-fast bowlers in the Women's National Cricket League on factors such as technique, flexibility, body composition and other individual characteristics.

The female players will then have their bowling performance and workload tracked over two seasons of cricket. The research project aims to understand why female bowlers tend to sustain more shoulder injuries, while their male counterparts generally incur a higher incidence of back injuries. Bureau Report