Umpires avoiding being hit?

[Acumen]

I wonder whether we should be changing advice?

If the ball is coming directly towards you, should you try to catch it rather than taking evasive action?

The players would laugh but you would be safe apart from, possibly, sore hands.

[missingleg]

I'm not sure what to advise...if it's coming at you that fast whatever you do will be an instinctive evolutionary reflex to prevent harm!

When at the striker's end, I often move more behind square to avoid being hit when really I should move in front of square as the ball will arc behind square when pulled or cut.

With today's bats and batsmen's strength, it won't be long before I seriously think of a helmet in T20 games.

[Antipodean]

Especially the ex-players turned umpires I can see catching being potentially safer from a mortality (though not in other aspects) point of view, as even if you miss completely your better off being hit on the front than the side or back, but I think the 'whatever is instinctive' is the best method, especially for the guys that have been around a while and would need to retrain themselves for any policy or best-practice guidelines.


Umpires wearing helmets are more and more common here in Australia. In NSW there's a grade cricket umpire that has been doing it for years after getting 5 teeth knocked out and having $50k of surgery of fix everything (Karl Wentzel is his name if you want to google it) and two of our national panel umpires wear helmets in the BBL 20/20 and ODI. I can only see it getting more prevalent.

Heres a couple of vids of the umpires talking about the helmets:
www.bigbash.com.au/video/umpires-verdict-renegades-scorchers-abood-helmet/2015-12-31
www.bigbash.com.au/video/umpires-verdict-sixers-thunder-scg/2016-01-17