FROM the elite sportsman to the pub-side player, the warm-up seems to be such a hazardous activity that many think it is best watched from a distance. Glenn McGrath may feel so after tearing ankle ligaments when he trod on a cricket ball while playing touch rugby an hour before the start of the second Test.

McGrath’s injury seems to be a case of plain misfortune and any criticism of touch rugby as a legitimate way of getting the muscles loose is wide of the mark. As well as sport-specific exercises (bowling in McGrath’s case), doing games or exercises is recommended to keep people interested. Management of the area in which they were practising is a more relevant criticism. The ball on which McGrath stood was laid out for a fielding drill that Australia were about to carry out.

“The warm-up is critical. If people are bored and not paying attention, they risk starting a training session or a game poorly,” Dave Reddin, the fitness coach for the England rugby union team for the past seven years, said. “That can work physically and mentally. The warm-up can help you to get mentally prepared, so you try not to do the same thing the whole time.”

He thinks that touch rugby can be a great way to warm up. “We use wrestling and five-a-side football, although it’s probably the worst five-a-side football there’s ever been,” Reddin said. “We used to do water polo, but it just turned into a mass brawl, so we had to stop.”

But something such as rugby has practical benefits for mobility, balance and hand-to-eye co-ordination for the cricketer. “We often do visual work when warming-up and that can involve using a smaller ball or a different shape ball,” Redding said. “It makes the players work harder than they normally have to.

“The reason for the warm-up is that by increasing body temperature we are increasing performance levels. What we call proprioceptive work — balance and mobility work — actively increases performance and decreases chance of injury.

“Stretching is important, but what used to happen is static flexibility work. Research has shown that, while this is excellent for lengthening muscles, what it is doing is reducing the tone of the nervous system.

“Obviously if you are playing a dynamic sport, such as cricket or rugby, you want the nervous system firing, because throwing, running and turning utilise the electrical system. You want it optimally fired up so the signals get through in the right order and are co-ordinating excellently. Static stretching slows everything down.

“You can verify this with a jump test. You will jump less high after static stretching than if you’ve done a dynamic warm-up. Something that is less provable, but the anecdotal evidence seems reasonable, is that static stretching can decrease co-ordination.”

Steve Rixon, the Australian coach of Surrey and formerly of New Zealand and New South Wales, said that McGrath’s injury was just an accident. “Warming up with touch rugby had nothing to do with what happened,” Rixon said. “You try to have as much variety with methods of warming up. We’ve come a long way from guys running three or four laps around the boundary.

“With the amount of cricket you play over here, you have to vary the warm-up. At New South Wales, because they play less, the warm-up tended to be a bit harder. Playing a bit of football can be good for working on hand-to-eye co- ordination. What happened to McGrath was just bad luck.”

Reddin agrees, up to a point. “It might have been unlucky, but you can’t let things like that happen. You have to be so vigilant, like a PE teacher with kids,” he said. “It may be as straightforward as it sounds, but I am sure somebody (in the Australia camp) will be p***** off with themselves.”

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