Physiotherapy is still a budding profession globally and considering sports, players have begun respecting and know more about what physios are and what is their job. The cream of the crop players across all the sports have access to multiple physiotherapists because of their duties to play for their nation/state/club and if need be a personal one too.
Let us consider the cricketer, Virat Kohli, according to his sport and physio requirement. Being the captain of a cricket crazy nation is tough, you have to grind wins internationally to maintain ranking whilst representing a club — Royal challengers Bengaluru and also setting benchmarks for fitness in the Indian cricketing standards. Mind you, he’s consistent at all three.
It’s natural for him to have access to a home town physio, a club physio and a national team physio and being the head of the cricket contingent garners him attention from all physios alike. In such cases, it is important to balance out the rest of the squad according to the sport’s rate and type of injuries and players playing at a time. Continuing with cricket as our example again where injuries are non-contact mostly and rate of injuries is less, 4 physiotherapists per a squad of 25 should suffice. A physio can cater to 6-7 players treating them for recurrent injuries and work on preventing any other injuries in a day. If we change the format to test cricket, it increases the duties of a physiotherapist over the period of 5-days where he needs to deliver, this reduces the limit from 6-7 to 3 or maximum of 4 considering the brakes and timeouts.
A good example in previous times is going to be the historic test match against Australia where India emerged victorious after being given a follow on. VVS laxman and Rahul dravid played it till perfection when they scored 281 and 180 having batted an entire day. It is said that both of them suffered from recurrent injuries even before the test match began. Both of them suffered from back strains and were treated by the team physio Andrew Leipus who they credited later with their performance. This test match is considered one of the greatest matches in the history of cricket. Were there any other injuries during the match and how many physios were there at the time for the entire team? Both questions remain significant yet unanswered but imagine if there were other injuries and the physiotherapist could not deliver at the time, history wouldn’t have been made. Although, all this falls under the speculation banner, it still is worth considering.
Coming to a different aspect of cricket, the IPL 2020, which is a 2-month-long event with matches played at an average of 1 game in 2.5 days, the demanding format is more susceptible to injuries. The shoulder injury suffered by R. Ashwin of the Delhi capitals is prime example of this especially after being out-of touch from competitive cricket since the past 6 months. Kudos to Patrick Farhart (Physio) for managing the injury well. Why did this happen though? The format of IPL demands intensity from every player; it is an event with blistering figures and record-breaking spells. Records are set and broken each year, but this puts the player’s mind and body under great stress, making them more susceptible to injuries. Recovery and injury rehab should be on point because of time constraints. Taking the demands into consideration a team of 4 physiotherapists with two other masseurs should be adept in managing the squad and also keeping them injury-free, also a humble request for the team coach and managers will be, to not be snobbish in hiring physios as they form a key component of the support staff chain.
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Thank you for taking time out to read this article. It is going to be a part of a bigger genre where we explore physiotherapy from a practical and management aspect. This article is our take on the physio staff management in a team format. We cannot cover all the sports because of time restrictions, but if you guys liked the article and want us to break it down for each (or any requested) sport, mention it in the comments below. The figures are not validated by research, albeit are based on author’s personal knowledge and practical experiences in team management.
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