World’s Unluckiest Cricket Player Hit in the Crotch on Consecutive Balls

In Monday’s Hot Clicks: a bad day at work for cricketer Alex Hales, a great stop by a Dodgers ball girl and more.

“That has nailed him in the gooly wooly woolies”

Maybe cricket batsmen need to start wearing cups.

Alex Hales and the Trent Rockets faced the Oval Invincibles on Sunday in a new English cricket competition called The Hundred. How The Hundred differs from other forms of cricket is not worth getting into here because you don’t need to know anything about the rules to understand what happened to Hales.

Hales was batting against Reece Topley when he was hit in the crotch not once but twice. On consecutive balls.

The first nut shot came after Hales swung and missed at a delivery that bounced up and drilled him, causing him to let out an anguished “oh, no!”

“That has nailed him in the gooly wooly woolies,” the announcer said.

You would think that Hales would be more protective of his nether regions after the first incident but no. On the very next ball, Hales was struck once again in the gooly wooly woolies, at which point everybody on the field but Hales was chuckling softly.

Every... ball... counts?pic.twitter.com/BYpUZ54hLo

— The Hundred (@thehundred) August 8, 2021

I know next to nothing about cricket, but I do know that Hales isn’t even the only English batsman to get hit in the nuts twice during the same turn at bat.

In January 2020, during a match in Australia’s Big Bash League, Liam Livingstone was hit in the crotch twice within a span of a few balls. The Livingstone clip is one of my favorite videos on the internet because he was wearing a microphone, which means we got to hear him yell, “Oh, nooo!” (just as Hales did) loud and clear.

Because of the way the bowler bounces the ball and how the batter opens his hips up as he swings, getting hit in the crotch doesn’t appear to be all that uncommon in cricket. Just ask English star Ben Stokes, who, after getting hit where the sun don’t shine in 2019 during the prestigious Ashes test series, yelled, “Ahhh, in the d---!” as he crumpled to the turf. 

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pic.twitter.com/BUi4JaG92U

— zz (@z_3za) August 8, 2021

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A good song

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