New Law on Cricket Helmets by ICC

The ICC has announced that all batsmen in Men’s and Women’s International cricket will have to wear helmets that conform to the British Standard BS7928:2013. The new testing was done because there was a concern that many helmets had a gap between the peak and the grille that could be broken through by a fast ball. This resulted in injuries to players like Craig Kieswetter and Stuart Broad.

The ICC have been very stern in their issuing of the new regulations and the new regulations will go into effect on February 1st of 2017. Batsmen who fail to comply with the new law will be given two warnings, should they fail to comply on a third occasion the batter could face a one match ban.

It should be noted that these regulations have nothing to do with the outcome of the report on the death of Phil Hughes. The ICC have not made it mandatory for batsmen to wear neck guards or stem guards. The ICC have not made it mandatory for a batsman to wear a helmet when batting. This leads to the fact that according to the laws it is better to be wearing no helmet than to be wearing a helmet that does not conform to the British Standard regulations.

The ECB has already introduced this law for all professional English cricketers in 2015. The ECB ruling also states that players the field close into the wicket also need to wear BSI compliant cricket helmets. As far as the ICC ruling is concerned, it seems that the ruling only applies to batsmen.

Cricket Batting Helmets that do conform to the BSI testing include offerings from:

Shrey Cricket Batting Helmets

GM Cricket Batting Helmets

Gray Nicolls Batting Helmets

The standards are in place to protect batsmen and even players playing leather ball amateur cricket should endeavor to use a BSI compliant helmet

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