New Zealand batter Kane Williamson has started a business inspired by one of cricket’s most \u200bpainful rites of passage, launching his own line \u200cof “premium alloy” boxes to protect players’ most sensitive areas.<\/p>\n
Worn inside a player’s briefs as a shield for the groin, boxes are \u200ban essential piece of protective kit for batters \u200bfacing deliveries that can exceed 140 km\/hr (87 mph).<\/p>\n
Williamson \u2060said a ball from South Africa’s feared fast \u200bman Dale Steyn in 2012 cracked his box and \u200binspired the “Cover” brand he had co-founded.<\/p>\n
“It was extremely painful and it just absolutely dropped me,” the former New Zealand captain said \u200bin a statement.<\/p>\n
Read:\u00a0Bangladesh crush Pakistan in ODI series opener<\/p>\n
“I was hit, my box split, and \u200bthat made it pretty clear that the protection players were relying \u200con \u2060wasn’t up to the demands of the modern game”.<\/p>\n
Co-founder Jason Low said the box’s alloy shell could handle ball speeds well over 200 km\/hr and offer protection \u200bfrom high-speed \u200bprojectiles across \u2060other hard ball sports like hockey, lacrosse and baseball.<\/p>\n
While boxes have long been a \u200bstaple of cricket kit, players are still \u200boccasionally \u2060left writhing after being struck low by a fast ball.<\/p>\n
Australia’s T20 captain Mitchell Marsh\u00a0missed two games at the \u2060World Cup\u00a0last month after suffering “internal testicular \u200bbleeding” from being hit in the groin by a ball at training.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Zealand batter Kane Williamson has started a business inspired by one of cricket’s most \u200bpainful rites of passage, launching his own line \u200cof “premium alloy” boxes to protect players’ most sensitive areas. Worn inside a player’s briefs as a shield for the groin, boxes are \u200ban essential piece of protective kit for batters \u200bfacing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2285,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279\/revisions\/2285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}