The association between the growth spurt status of adolescent male cricket players and risk of injury during a cricket season – A prospective longitudinal cohort study

Abstract

Objective: To determine the association between the growth spurt status (GSS) and injury risk in adolescent male cricket players during a six-month cricket season.

Materials and methods: Seventy-six male cricketer players (13-18 years old), participated in this prospective longitudinal cohort study. Injuries were self-reported weekly using a standardised questionnaire. GSS was calculated (Khamis-Roche Method) at the beginning, middle and end of the season as a percentage of predicted adult height (%PAH), categorising participants into pre-peak height velocity (PHV), circa-PHV, and post-PHV. Fischer exact, Mann-Whitney and t-tests calculated differences between groups. A mixed-effects Poisson regression analysis determined the association between the GSS and injury.

Results: At the beginning of the season, 61.8% (n=47) of participants were in circa-PHV and 38.2% (n=29) in post-PHV. At the end of the season, most participants were in post-PHV (n=38, 55.1%). Thirty-seven participants (48.7%) reported 60 in-season injuries, and 13.08 injuries were reported/1000 player hours. The highest percentage noted of injured participants in the middle and end of the season were in circa-PHV (66.7%, n=6) and post-PHV (62.5%, n=10), respectively. Previous injury predicted in-season injury (95%CI, p=0.034) in the univariate analysis. Participants were 1.9 times more likely to get injured if previously injured. No statistically independent relationship between GSS (%PAH) and rate of injuries was found.

Conclusions: There was no association between GSS and injury risk during a six-month cricket season. Pre-season assessment should identify previous injuries as this was a predictor of in-season injury and this data could form part of injury prevention strategies for young cricketers. Growth spurt status should not be overemphasized as a primary risk factor, clinicians and support staff should rather highlight established factors (bowling workload, technique, strength deficits). GSS could be monitored individually in at-risk players.

Cite this article as: Olivier FM, OlivierB, Macmillan C. The association between the growth spurt status of adolescent male cricket players and risk of injury during a cricket season – A prospective longitudinal cohort study.Turk J Sports Med. 2025;60(3):105-13; https://doi.org/10.47447/tjsm.0901

Ethical approval was received from the Human Research Ethics Committee (Medical) from the University of the Witwatersrand (ethical clearance number M220439) and performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Written consent and assent was obtained for all participants and confidentiality was maintained by de-identifying participants and saving the identifier list separately from the data sheets.

FO was the first author and was responsible for conceptualised, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, writing the original draft, visualisation, project admin, software, validation, data curation, resources, writing (review and editing), funding acquisition. BO was responsible for conceptualisation, methodology, visualisation, writing (review and editing) and supervision. CM was responsible for conceptualisation, methodology, visualisation, writing (review and editing) and supervision.

The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to authorship and/or publication of the article.

This study received funding from the South African Society of Physiotherapy.

The author would like to thank the headmasters of schools, Directors and Masters in Charge of Cricket as well as parents and players for their commitment to the study. A special thank you to the staff at Biomedical Statistics for assistance during the data analysis.