Why Yorkshire CCC stars have been banned from playing football

The club has outlawed the practice in a bid to prevent injuries.

The move comes after a spate of football-related injuries in recent years, both at county and international level, including to Yorkshire batsman Will Fraine only last September.

Fraine dislocated his left knee playing football before a day’s play in the County Championship match against Somerset at Taunton.

Martyn Moxon, Yorkshire’s director of cricket, said: “We won’t be playing football going forward.

“It’s something that we’ve reviewed each year, and the time has now come for us to knock it on the head.

“We just can’t afford the risk.

“Given what’s happened with Frainey, and obviously Rory Burns recently with England, too many injuries seem to be happening.”

Burns was ruled out of the ongoing Sri Lanka tour after damaging ankle ligaments playing football during the recent Test series in South Africa.

Prior to that, Yorkshire’s Jonny Bairstow lost the England wicketkeeping gloves after twisting an ankle playing football during the previous Sri Lanka tour in 2018.

James Anderson, Joe Denly and Ian Bell are among other big-name casualties over the years from football-related mishaps, with Burns’s injury the straw that broke the camel’s back for an England management which has also pulled the plug on pre-play kickabouts.

Other counties could follow suit as concerns around the practice gather pace, but Moxon clarified: “It’s not something that we’ve been told to do by England, or anything like that.

“I think that most clubs now are probably reviewing it, and what each individual county does I’ve no idea.

“This is something that we’ve decided for ourselves and something that we feel is best to put a halt to.

“You can still get injured in fielding practice and stuff, that’s unavoidable, but this hopefully minimises the risk of injuries occurring.”

Yorkshire did not play football before every day of Championship cricket last summer, but the practice has become increasingly common in English cricket.

Advocates feel that it adds spice and fun to the chore of warming-up, which can be something of a wearisome duty in a long county season.

But the risk of injury is obvious among team-mates/friends who are inherently competitive in any case, while critics have long pointed out that one does not see Lionel Messi, for example, practising his slip catching skills before Barcelona’s games.

“We didn’t play football every day,” said Moxon.

“We didn’t play first morning of a Championship game; it was days two and three and possibly four.

“It was just to get the lads’ bodies moving, let them have fun and a bit of competition.

“There was method in our madness, but because of the number of injuries now occurring, not necessarily with us but around the country, it’s reached the point where the risk is too high for the return that you get.”

Not all football-related injuries have been the result of contact.

Fraine was not tackled by anyone, for instance, when he went down at Taunton last year and neither was Burns, who was simply shooting at goal while being shadowed by Test captain Joe Root.

“It’s very rarely that it’s actually contact that causes the injuries,” said Moxon.

“It’s things like overbalancing, or you just put your foot in the wrong place at the wrong time and it comes from twisting.

“Nobody was anywhere near Frainey; he just kicked the ball and must have kicked it just at the wrong angle and it damaged his knee.

“It’s simply about trying to minimise the risk.”

Yorkshire now plan to shake-up their warm-up routines.

They have yet to finalise exactly how but intend to experiment on their pre-season tour to Mumbai in India, which runs from March 11-24.

“We’re going to do preparation differently,” said Moxon.

“We haven’t completely nailed that down yet, but we’re going to trial it out in India and it will be different to how we’ve done it in the past.”

Pressed as to how this might look, Moxon explained: “There won’t necessarily be a long team event (before play); it will be more individualised.

“It’s not that we don’t practice cricket skills as it is; we do.

“But what we’re probably not going to have is that standard ‘all meet at 10.10 and do a warm-up together’, even though the players have already done some cricket so they were kind of doing a second warm-up.

“It’s probably going to be that we meet as a group later in the morning, so it gives players more time either to relax or recover from a day in the field or to work on their skills.

“Essentially, we’re going to be more flexible and the group time will be different.”