Fresh setback for concussed Pucovski

Victoria young gun Will Pucovski has suffered another setback in his blossoming cricket career after the Bushrangers confirmed he'd suffered a delayed onset of concussion.

Pucovski was struck on the helmet while batting in Victoria's JLT One-Day Cup match against Queensland at North Sydney Oval on Saturday and retired hurt.

The 19-year-old returned to the crease later in the innings after passing initial concussion testing, facing three more balls before he was bowled by Mitchell Swepson for 5.

But after further monitoring and secondary testing, Pucovski displayed symptoms and was diagnosed with concussion.

"We continued to monitor and test Will after the knock and unfortunately he experienced some mild symptoms of delayed concussion," Victoria physiotherapist Nick Adcock said.

"He’ll be assessed again tomorrow, however we’ve made the call today that he won’t play against the Cricket Australia XI (on Tuesday)."

Pucovksi, who last summer broke the Under 19 National Championships run-scoring record at a single tournament, sustained multiple head knocks during his teenage years and was again concussed in February when he was struck in the head while fielding on Sheffield Shield debut.

He took no further part in the match and was unable to play for the remainder of the season with doctors advising he undertake minimal physical activity.

The first, and most serious, concussion he suffered came while training for football at high school when the then lightly-built Pucovski was flung in a sling tackle and his head slammed into the knee of another player, the severity of that blow consigning him to six months away from any sporting activity.

On his return to cricket, he sustained further blows. He was hit while batting at training, struck by an errant ball that hit from an adjoining practice net and once even crackied his head on a door at his Hampton home.

He has attributed his repeated episodes of significant head trauma as "dumb luck, to a large extent" but adds that medical experts have told him he carries a certain predisposition to concussive injury because of his unfortunate history.

"But they are pretty confident there will be no long-term effects and I feel pretty good," Pucovski told cricket.com.au earlier this year.

"I remember before the (Sheffield Shield) game, I've never been so nervous in my life.

"I could hardly sleep the night before and then when the game started I was okay.

"The first few balls when I was batting I was really nervous, but then I got into it and was just enjoying the experience until it all got taken away.

"The blow was pretty innocuous, it hit me pretty hard but it was fairly random.

"I've never been hit in the head while fielding that I can remember, and then in my first Shield game the ball just skips up off the turf and got me.

"It was pretty rough the night that I got hit, trying to come to terms with the situation - that it had happened again.

"I'd got a taste for cricket at that level and loved it, and hopefully there is more to come but maybe it was the universe telling me not to get too far ahead of myself."

On a recommendation of the Curtain Review into the death of Phillip Hughes, Cricket Australia altered its playing conditions last summer to permit the use of substitutes for players diagnosed with a concussion and have had the rule approved by the ICC on a two-year trial in first-class cricket.

"We strongly believe that the rules we've got in place are good for the sport and the player," CA's head of cricket operations Peter Roach told cricket.com.au last month.

"We would be heavily surprised if we weren't reporting favourable things from the trial and other countries weren't desperate to follow suit.

"The prominence of concussions is growing and awareness should continue to grow. We do play a sport that, while far from a regular occurrence, does have instances of concussions.

"We are making every effort to protect the player and we make no apology for it."