Freaky incidents: 5 cricketers who got injured in a bizarre manner

Injuries are a part and parcel of life especially while playing professional cricket. Cricketers have often sustained injuries while playing for their teams on the international and domestic level due to a variety of reasons.

The main reasons for players getting injured over the years have been either physical fatigue or getting hit by the ball or staining certain body parts while playing a cricket game. However, there have been incidents when the cricketers sustained injuries in some of the weirdest ways even before stepping on the cricket field to play the matches.

5. Glenn McGrath

Australia’s speed merchant Glenn McGrath had missed the second Test at Edgbaston of the Ashes Series in 2005 after suffering an injury on his right ankle in one of the most bizarre manners. Before the marquee game, the Australia cricket team were warming up by playing a game of touch rugby and McGrath, who was part of the drill too, stepped on the stray ball.

This resulted in Glenn hurting his ankle badly and sustaining a grade two tear to the lateral ligaments of his right ankle. As a consequence of the injury, the pacers was ruled out of the Test series and it proved to be very costly for the Australian side as they lost the second game followed by the marquee series.

4. Zak Crawley

The England cricket team received a massive blow ahead of the four-match Test series against India, starting from February 5 at MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai as their right-handed batsman Zak Crawley has been ruled out of the first two Tests after suffering a serious wrist injury.

The 23-year-old Crawley had picked the injury on February 2, Tuesday as he badly slipped on the marble floor while leaving the dressing room to participate in the practice session after serving a mandatory quarantine period in Chennai due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The England medical team continued to assess Zak’s progress over the next few weeks.

Crawley was likely to bat at Number 3 against India as England’s regular Test opening batsman but Rory Burns rejoined the team. He got up his chance in the 3rd Test against India and scored a sublime fifty in the first inning of the game.

3. Matthew Hayden

The 2006-07 cricket session wasn’t an ideal one for Australia’s star batsman Matthew Hayden as he succumbed to back-to-back two injuries that resulted in him getting sidelined for the entire cricket session. Hayden had broken his finger and thus was on a sabbatical from the game.

Thus, to get rid of his boredom, the Aussie player decided to leisurely go for a jog one day around his house. However, this proved to be a mistake on Hayden’s part as a local dog saw him running and attacked him. The bite from the dog punctured his skin, and he had to be rushed to the hospital with a five cm-deep gash in his ankle.

2. Jimmy Adams

During the 1998-1999 West Indies tour of South Africa, the veteran West Indian all-rounder Jimmy Adams was on a flight to Johannesburg when he sliced through some of his tendons on the right hand while cutting bread. Adams was brutally injured by the incident as Dr. Ali Bacher, who was present on the same flight, was immediately called to find Adams lying with blood gushing out of his hand.

The accident had resulted in Jimmy Adams, who represented West Indies in 54 Test matches and 127 One Day Internationals from 1992 to 2001, getting sidelined for the whole South Africa tour.

1. D’arcy Short

In 2018, before the commencement of the opening JLT One-Day Cup game of the summer, Western Australia’s left-handed batsman D’arcy Short was hit with some bad luck as he had sustained a freak injury. In an unlucky incident, D’arcy was playing with his pet dog at his home where his left hand got in the way of a dog toy.

This resulted in the dog brutally biting Short’s left hand and the bite caused a deep laceration to the palm of his hand. The batsman immediately needed a few stitches and a surgical washout to recover from the incident.