Sri Lanka-born physio recommends use of testing app for head injury to the players

By Bipin Dani

Sri Lanka-born Australian physio Dulan Kodikara was recently invited as a speaker to the 1st Virtual Symposium on Cricket & Sports Science, hosted by India's eminent orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Mandeep Dhillon.

"This 1st virtual conference on Cricket & Sports Science is a great concept and well timed with the current COVID global pandemic. The aim of this conference was to share current evidence and best practices in cricket injury prevention among surgeons, doctors, physiotherapists, trainers, coaches and players," Kodikara said.

Three Australian doctors John Orchard, Rene Fernandes and Kodikara spoke on cricket injury epidemiology, use of video imaging on fast bowling techniques and concussions and head injuries in cricket. Dr. Asela Rathnayaka, a sports physician from Sri Lanka presented his talk on “Pre-participation examination for cricketers.”

"I discussed various software and applications available for concussion assessment and introduced some of the mobile applications any medical staff with a cricket team can easily access. One such concussion testing application is ‘HitCheck’. It is important to have a baseline measure of all your players which can then be used to compare with scores when they get concussed – this will not only help to determine the seriousness of the injury but also how long they will have to be kept away from training/playing competitive cricket," said Kodikara.