The people behind this

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What began as an experiment in the backyard turned into an end to end engineering project: sketching the design, building prototypes and deliberately breaking them, testing through live matches, counting dismissals across hundreds of scorecards, and publishing all of it openly so anyone can build on it.

The part we did not expect was how much of it depended on people. Convincing a league to back something unproven. Listening to umpires explain why a part that costs more earns its place: a second stopper stops the bail guard collar sliding all the way to the ground, so after each stumping attempt the umpire lifts the collar back up a few inches instead of bending down to pick it up off the pitch. A few seconds each time, over a whole day in the field. Learning from coaches who had watched thousands of dismissals and knew things no measurement would have told us. Answering the same question from players until the answer was clear, and from organizers who had to make it work across dozens of grounds.

And a great many hours in the aisles of Lowe’s, Home Depot and Ace Hardware, and deep in Amazon listings, describing the idea to whoever would listen so they could point us at a part we had never heard of, then buying one or two at a time and testing them properly to see what survived a cricket ball.

A design only becomes real when the people who use it are willing to help you fix it, and working alongside them turned out to be as much a part of the engineering as anything on the drawing board.

It has been hard work and a great deal of fun, and we have learned more doing this than from anything else we have tried.

Leagues and clubs

On and off the field

Umpires, players, team mates, coaches, scorers, volunteers, friends, well wishers and family have all signed and shared the petition. A safety idea only travels as far as the people willing to vouch for it, and that support has meant a great deal.

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