Brain-injury experts urge tourists to play safe over Smith

AuSTRALIA were last night still considering picking Steve Smith for the third Ashes Test, which would go against england’s strict concussion protocol and advice from brain-injury experts.

Cricket Australia’s medical chief yesterday backed the handling of Smith’s withdrawal from the Lord’s Test on the grounds of concussion after he was floored by a 92mph Jofra Archer bouncer.

Alex Kountouris, Australia’s head of sports medicine, praised the work of the tourists’ doctor, Richard Saw, in allowing Smith to return to bat on Saturday before he was ruled out on Sunday after waking up with symptoms of concussion. But had Smith been an england player, he would already have been ruled out of the Headingley Test, starting on Thursday.

The eCB’s policy on head and neck strikes states that any individual displaying the kind of symptoms Smith (right) reported on Sunday will be kept on the sidelines for six days and can only return once signed off by the governing body’s chief medical officer, taking any decision out of the cricketer’s hands.

But Australia have no specific time-frame in their policy and the ICC leave such decisions to the expertise of an individual country’s medical staff on a case-by-case basis.

Smith will have to prove his reactions are up to speed in net practice tomorrow if he is to be selected.

Kountouris defended the decision to allow Smith to return to bat, saying: ‘The reality is only about one in five or six head impacts end up in concussion. If we pulled out every player who had a head impact, we’d be pulling out 80 per cent of players who don’t have a concussion. It would be an overreaction. ‘If you look at that game, there were three other head impacts and only Steve had a concussion. He didn’t have a concussion at the time, so he was allowed to play. If we took him out of the game, it would have been for no reason other than what we saw on the field.’ But a spokesman for brain-injury charity Headway said: ‘What this incident highlights is that no test for concussion is foolproof. The signs can be delayed for hours, even days. ‘You cannot take any risks with concussion, which is why we have always said that all sports have to take an “if in doubt, sit it out” approach. If there is even a hint of concussion when someone is bowling at 90mph, there is no way a player should be on the pitch.’

Sports scientist Ross Tucker says more weight should be given to the symptoms a player is showing on the field.

‘Given what they’ve said about 30 per cent of concussions being delayed, they’re admitting that a lot of time, their tests produce false negatives,’ he told Sportsmail. ‘They’re confessing to a blunt tool.

‘If that’s the case, we need to make it less about the tool, and the off-field testing, and more about the whole picture — and that means that the batsman who goes to ground after being hit, holds his head, is dizzy for the first ten seconds etc, should automatically be diagnosed as concussed.

‘Weight that initial 60 seconds of batsman behaviour a bit more strongly. If they’d done that with Smith, it’s likely he wouldn’t have come back but, as I see it, the doctor hasn’t done anything wrong.’