A salute to that invaluable piece of plastic by way of club cricket memories and a few design tweaks:
You always remember your first time. For me, it was a slate-grey afternoon in the Heathrow flight path.
The ball was doing a bit – which without wanting to get over-familiar – is as pre-emptive a sentence as you’re ever likely to read
True to form, our top, middle and late order
evaporated in the time it took to assess a
wicket as green as a seasick sailor, lose the
toss and prod, poke and punt our way into
submission.
Walking nonchalantly into bat at about 37-8, I
distinctly remember getting bat to ball several
times – a feat worthy of being note given its
paucity down the years – before being hit flush
in the box.
Weirdly, cricketers tend not to be shy about
recalling when this universal eye watering
moment happened to them; sometimes revealed
in hushed tones from the clammy embrace of a
changing room corner, sometimes with a faux
bravado not felt at the time.
What did I do? Well, I feigned indifference as my
team mates collectively sucked in their breath in
solidarity and got on with the task at hand –
namely smashing a double hundred before tea.
Does that sound remotely feasible? Thought
not.
For a start, I began to cry. Not in an appallingly
public emotional outpouring kind of way but an
involuntary welling of tears brought on by the
kind of excruciating pain I’d associate with
having your unmentionables blowtorched.
It doesn’t take much to claim my wicket; I have
been remarkably generous down the years when
it comes to gifting it through an ingenious array
of methods.
But on that particularly dank and anatomically
altering Saturday, I shovelled the next delivery
into a fielder’s hands with something
approaching laser precision.
It was absolutely anything to get off the field
and collapse with ignomy as teammates did the
decent thing and laughed themselves hoarse.
While cricket equipment has evolved down the
decades, the humble cricket box is much as it
ever has been: a plastic protector of dubious
merit.
Credit where credit’s due. They don’t tend to
shatter like they used to at school, sending
shards of plastic about as blunt as a surgeon’s
scalpel through your undercrackers.
Those were the days. When you had to
whitewash your pads before school matches
and batting gloves were those hideous – not to
mention utterly useless – spiky monstrosities.
While not wishing to claim any overwhelming
medical provenance when it comes to the
ergonomics associated with temporarily housing
your private parts in plastic casing, some design
has been fairly foolish.
Though manufacturers might beg to differ,
supposed improvements down the years have
been negligible; in fact changes have tended to
be as a result of previous daft tinkering and
clearly not based on any scientific certainty.
Making a cricket box tear-shaped seems
decadent to the point of dangerous; some are
almost pointy which, whilst accommodating for
all creatures great and small, is just asking for
trouble.
A picture has popped into my head that has, I’m
ashamed to say, caused uncontrollable waves of
juvenile guffawing.
I just wondered how cricket boxes are tested?
There’s no point testing them without being
worn by cricketers so do they line up a group of
willing volunteers – probably cash-trapped
students at Loughborough’s national Cricket
Performance Centre – and fire cricket balls at
them?
Now that’s a video worth scouring the internet
for.
Perhaps it’s just the names that have changed.
Now you can opt for the Shock Doctor Ultra
Carbon Flex Cup.
Which, when all said and done, is still a piece of
plastic with a bit of padding which half-
heartedly does the job in a haphazard way we
don’t seem to mind settling for when it comes
to pads or helmets.
It’s about time the twin masters of science and
technology took the evolution of the cricket box
to another level and we’re here to help with our
own (patented) idea.
How about something along the lines of an
inflatable cricket nappy?
Think about that rapid inflation mechanism of a
steering wheel airbag deployed on impact when
the cricket ball hits.
You might need oversized cricket whites to cope
with unexpected rapid expansion but what
you’re reading right now could soon be the
exciting future of cricket protection.
Until our next-gen prototype hits the shelves,
don’t forget that humble plastic white box in
your kit bag. It’s not perfect but one day, it
might just be called upon.
Author
Topic: Tales of the humble cricket box (Read 1289 times)