There’s no doubt that cricket can be a dangerous sport considering the hardness of the ball that is used.
Indeed, batters are provided with the protective equipment that they need to ensure that injury is reduced as much as possible. Of course, there is every chance that something can happen, although that risk would have been evaluated before even taking up the game. Speaking of something that can happen, many bettors enjoy finding the best cricket tips available because the sport can be rather unpredictable at times and can provide serious amounts of entertainment.
However, accidents can happen when the ball is smashed away into an area that is not typically the playing field, for example, in the stands or around the boundary edge when playing in a local park.
Now, when the game is played outside of a stadium, perhaps a person’s guard should be up a little and their awareness levels a little higher than normal – like crossing a road.
In 2014, though, Ms Lewis decided not to air on the side of caution and paid a horrible price when she was injured by a ball that had come flying towards her.
According to a report by The Times, the woman was hit in the left eye with the cricket ball and was left with a serious injury.
She was awarded a sum of money in regards to damages, however a court recently overturned that decision as they felt she should have been aware of the risks that involved when walking past the game; especially considering she is a member of the world-famous Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). With this membership, she is one of the lucky few who manage to get into the pavilion at the Home of Cricket, Lords.
She had claimed that she thought that they would have been using a soft ball in a public space, however the judge simply dismissed it as he pointed to the fact that she walked by the frequently used cricket pitch on a number of occasions.
Giving his ruling, the judge said that there were in “her full field of vision, 13, presumably, adult male cricketers wearing whites”. He also said that “a batsman hits a ball as hard as possible” and “hitting the ball out of the ground is an incident of the game and one which the batsman would wish to bring about.” Mr Justice Stewart said: “Therefore precisely where the boundary was seems to me to be largely irrelevant. No batsman would seek to hit the ball so that it just went over the boundary.”
He added: “What I frankly fail to understand is how the [county court judge] could envisage that a cricket match played by adult men could be assumed by any reasonable passer-by to be using a soft ball. This would have been particularly so if they were wearing whites and therefore playing what would appear to be a serious match.”
We imagine Ms Lewis will be a little more observant when walking past the pitch, or when sitting in the pavilion at Lords Cricket Ground in the future.
