When a participant is hit on the hand by a cricket ball, the primary response is to shake it off. Does this assist?

Lucknow Tremendous Giants’ Rishabh Pant performs a shot through the IPL 2025 cricket match between Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Lucknow Tremendous Giants, Lucknow, Might 27, 2025.
| Photograph Credit score: PTI

Shortly shaking the hand might briefly really feel higher. However relying on how laborious the ball has struck the hand, instinctively shaking it might or might not assist.

A well-known 1965 paper mentioned this was as a result of the jolt sends nerve indicators to the spinal wire sooner than the sharp-pain indicators attain it, briefly closing the ‘gate’ on the latter. However this gate-control principle has come to be disputed for numerous causes. This mentioned, analysis has discovered the jolting motion might assist the particular person distract themselves from the ache and consider they’re doing one thing about it. 

Cricket balls are laborious objects and on the sphere they are often travelling quick sufficient to trigger extreme accidents. Vigorous shaking is thus not suggested as a result of it might exacerbate bruising, small fractures within the finger bones, ligament tears or dislodge comfortable tissue that has already been broken.

It could be higher to cease shaking the hand and begin first help. Within the occasion of a contusion, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons particularly states, “Don’t therapeutic massage the injured space.”

As a substitute it recommends the RICE protocol: Relaxation (“defend the injured space from additional hurt”), Ice (“use chilly packs for 20 minutes at a time”), Compress (“frivolously wrap the injured space in a comfortable bandage”), and Elevate (“increase the injured space to a stage above the guts”).