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Science of injuries

Naimul Karim
If one looks back to recent developments in Bangladesh cricket, the predominant pattern will be of cricketers breaking down. Injury management must now be considered the most important aspect of Bangladesh's progress in the cricket world.
Consider the evidence: Shakib Al Hasan, diagnosed with multiple problems, will now have to be used 'selectively' in the future while Mashrafe Bin Mortaza continues his struggle to return to international cricket. Pacers have struggled most; Nazmul Hossain recently underwent a kneereplacement surgery, Shahadat Hossain is battling a tendon injury, Abul Hasan is about to undergo a crucial surgery on his back and young Taskin Ahmed, yet to enter international cricket is already suffering from lower leg muscle issues.
BCB's sports physician has compared the players to a ticking time bomb. "They suffer from minor injuries at some point of time, which aggravates over time and suddenly one fine day, they break!" said Debasish Chowdhury. "A system is required to know the exact condition of the players at all times and help them rehabilitate."
That is where Bangladesh's physical performance manager Stuart Karppinen steps in. For the last few months, the Australian has been working on building a system that would predict the stress levels of a player and thereby help in preventing injuries.
"Players get injured because they can't handle the load that they are taking. But there will often be signs and symptoms before they break that they are struggling to cope with their workload. That's one of the things that we are working hard on setting up," explained Stuart, who formerly worked as the Australia's conditioning coach.
In the last few months, Stuart has been performing tests on players from the Under-19 level to the national team.There are different tests to measure physical attributes. The player's fatigue, for instance, is measured through repeated jumps up and down a digital plate, which measures the amount of lower body power that player generates. "When we are fatigued, we lose that ability to generate power," explained Karppinen.
The amount of difficulty with which a player performs an exercise, termed as load, is another important factor that is measured. "The loading value changes even if a player does the same amount of work," he said.
There are several other markers based mainly on the players' energy levels, measured on a regular basis before eventually a default figure is created for each player.
"No one single value here is probably cause for concern. But when we see a combination like a decrease of lower body power, increase in load, a drop in body weight, a decrease in power up over weeks of testing, then these are signs that athlete is on the negative side of stress recovery.
"When that happens, we unload that athlete the following week and reduce the number of hours of training, hoping that he would then recover," said Stuart.
The collection of such data for the national team began six weeks ago with the beginning of the fitness camp. Stuart and Co tested the players using the newly-bought device, the Speed Light-Gate. However, according to the Australian, for the collected data to make sense one needs many more weeks of testing.
"We have really just gotten started," said Stuart, pointing towards an Excel sheet with a host of numbers next to the players' names. "You need about three months for this stat to have a bit of power, "says Stuart.
The current numbers according to Stuart are 'way off international standards'. The only way to improve them is to continue organising fitness camps.
A similar round of tests was taken back in 2005 during Stuart's previous stint as conditioning coach for the Tigers. The records of those results disappeared soon after he left. Considering the current dire state of the fitness levels, one hopes that Stuart's second innings goes as planned.