Cricket: Umpires could wear helmets in trial

Cricket umpires could be wearing helmets for protection on the future. Photo / Getty

Slip fielders wearing helmets to spin bowlers, coaches wearing lids when they give throw-downs in the nets and umpires adorned in baseball-style headgear.

These topics are all on the agenda for the ECB who are expected to make helmets compulsory for batsmen against all bowling and for all fielders - except those behind square - within eight yards of the batsman.

These are some of the ideas being debated by cricket authorities in Adelaide a year on from the death of Australian opening batsman Phillip Hughes.

Tests on headwear for the umpires have begun and cricket has tapped into the research of their baseball counterparts.

The eight yard helmet rule is expected to be endorsed this week and that is likely to flow through to the amateur game, Angus Porter, ceo of the Professional Cricketers' Association told the Telegraph.

"I don't want to second guess the meeting but there is a recognition that making it mandatory will help so batsmen do not have to worry about what they have to do if a spinner or medium pacer bowls a quicker ball.

"It is highly likely that it will be made mandatory in the nets.

"We have had bad injuries in the past with players facing bowling machines in the nets and it is likely there will also be a strong recommendation for use of helmets for coaches throwing balls in specifically designed situations such as when batsmen are trying to hit the ball back in full blooded way."

Feedback from umpires revealed they felt more vulnerable because T20 had provoked attacking mindsets and players were using more powerful bats.

Some had road-tested the masks baseball umpires used but found they were not quite suitable for seven hours work.

"But we do need to look at a lightweight version of face protection and there has been something developed for baseball pitchers," Porter said. "But it is not just the head. Umpires could wear chest protection."

"It is not out of the question that umpires could in some way have a shield to protect them, which sounds bizarre and as if we are trying to present exotic solutions, but we just have to think about what is practical to do."

The lack of planning about helmet safety throughout the cricket world, concerns Porter.

"What we lack is a co-ordinated international effort," he said.

The Australians have made wearing of helmets mandatory in professional cricket and the ECB is about to do something similar but in other parts of the world there is no regulation. This is a classic case where the ICC should be working together with boards so there is a degree of consistency being applied to the issue.

Sydney grade cricket umpire Karl Wentzel wears a helmet after losing five teeth when he was hit in the face by the ball in 2001.

"I umpired a charity match for Guy Sebastian and Chris Gayle said he was pleased to see me wearing it because he dreads the day when an umpire is hit straight on the head by a ball because it will kill him," Wentzel told the Sydney Morning Herald.