Pucovski ends career after long drawn concussion battle

The right-handed top order batter last played for Victoria in a Sheffield Shield match in March last year

Mumbai: Will Pucovski, the holder of Australia Test cap 460, retired from all forms of cricket on Tuesday aged 27, after a long-term battle with concussions caused by hits on the helmet by the ball.

Australia's Will Pucovski made his Test debut against India in the 2021 Sydney Test. (AP)

The right-handed top order batter last played for Victoria in a Sheffield Shield match in March last year when he took a blow to the helmet from Tasmania pacer Riley Meredith. It was the 13th known concussion hit he took through his sporting career, starting from one he suffered while playing Australian rules football as a teenager.

Concussion is an increasing concern in all professional and elite sports where head impacts occur, particularly since research emerged suggesting that there may be long-term neurological and psychological consequences from the injury.

Indian cricket fans will remember Pucovski as a long-haired 24-year-old opening batter from his Test debut in the 2021 Sydney Test. He made 62 in the first innings but injured his shoulder in the field that ruled him out of the rest of the series.

Though he was a prolific scorer in first-class cricket – 36 matches, 2,350 runs, Avg 45.19 – his battles with concussion remained a constant. Pucovski was struck on the head by a Kartik Tyagi bouncer in a tour game in 2021 that delayed his Test debut until the third Test in Sydney.

“I wanted to be that guy that was a leader of the batting unit. I wanted to play 100 Tests. Unfortunately, one Test is where it ends,” he told Australia’s SEN news on Tuesday.

The batter suffered two concussions in the space of three months in early 2024 after which an expert panel recommended that he retire. He took the advice after much introspection.

“You want to hold on to your dream for as long as possible, but the flip side to that is you just want to live your life normally,” he said. “You reach a stage where you don’t want to be hit on the head again and do more damage to the brain than what’s already been done.”

Pucovski spoke about struggles in doing everyday things after his last concussion. “In the couple of months post that (last concussion) I struggled to get anything done..., walking around the house was a struggle,” he said.

“My fiancee was annoyed because I didn’t contribute to chores. I was sleeping a lot. From there it’s been a tough year, a lot of the symptoms didn’t go away which has led me to this decision. The first few months were horrendous, but things didn’t leave me” he added.

But it was clear that he could no longer continue to play the game.

“The technology isn’t quite there to understand what is what,” he said. “When you have symptoms for over a year, and I’ve had others for numerous years, it can be quite difficult to see how I can get out to play professional sport again when I’m struggling to live my life how I want to,” Pucovski said.

“It’s complicated. There’s the mental health symptoms, which is one part of it. Then there’s the fatigue, which is quite bad; I get regular headaches. I really struggle with things on my left side. If I have things happening in my left, I feel sick and dizzy. I struggle with motion sickness....Yes (it’s scary), at 27 I have so much ahead of me and I have so many things I want to achieve in my life.”

Concussion in sport

Concussion injuries are more common in contact sports such as American football, football, wrestling, boxing, rugby and ice hockey. The danger of repeated concussions has long been known for boxers and wrestlers. A form of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) common in these two sports, dementia pugilistica was first described in 1928. An awareness of the risk of concussions in other sports began to grow in the 1990s, and especially in the mid-2000s.

It was only in 2019 that ICC put a set of rules in place to deal with the issue in cricket.

Concussions in cricket are less frequent than injuries to the hamstring, lumbar spine and trunk. However, they still occur and over the years, many batters have taken hits on their head while facing fast bowlers.

According to the ICC’s Concussion Management Guidelines, “Sport-related concussion is defined as: ‘a traumatic brain injury caused by a direct blow to the head, neck or body resulting in an impulsive force being transmitted to the brain that occurs in sport and exercise activities. This initiates a neurotransmitter and metabolic cascade, with possible axonal injury, blood flow change and inflammation affecting the brain.”

In 2019, ICC agreed to allow the use of concussion replacements in all international cricket matches with the substitute having to be a ‘like-for-like replacement’, approved by the Match Referee. Soon after Marnus Labuschagne became the first concussion substitute -- for Steven Smith -- in a game with England.