Cricket Thigh Pads and Chest Guards: Upper Body Protection Guide
How thigh pads, chest guards, and arm guards work in cricket batting — covering when to wear them, how they fit under the batting shirt, and the protection each provides against fast bowling.
Beyond the helmet, gloves, and leg pads, batters at all levels regularly use additional protective equipment — thigh pads, chest guards, arm guards, and elbow guards — to protect areas exposed to fast bowling or rising deliveries. These items sit under the batting shirt or are strapped over the arm, making them invisible to the camera but crucial to a batter's confidence when facing pace on fast or bouncy pitches.
Thigh Pads: Inner and Outer
Thigh pads are worn on the front (inner) thigh and sometimes on the back (outer) thigh. The inner thigh pad is the most common and is worn by almost every professional batter. It straps around the thigh under the trousers and protects the femur and surrounding muscle from deliveries that rise steeply. An outer thigh pad protects the back leg from balls angling into the body. Many batters wear only an inner thigh pad; batters facing genuine pace in Test cricket on green or bouncy tracks often add an outer thigh pad as well.
Chest Guards and Body Armour
Chest guards are foam or hard-shell inserts worn inside the batting shirt, covering the sternum, lower rib cage, and sometimes the upper arm. They became standard in professional cricket through the 1990s as pitches became faster and bouncers more frequent. Some chest guards are vest-style garments that the batter wears as an undershirt; others are inserts sewn into a padded undershirt. Full body armour — covering chest, shoulder, and upper arm together — is available and used on pitches with extreme pace or uneven bounce.
Arm Guards and Elbow Guards
Arm guards strap around the forearm of the front arm — the left forearm for a right-handed batter — protecting the ulna and radius from deliveries that hit the arm during defence. Elbow guards protect the point of the elbow. Both are particularly important on pitches that seam or swing late, where deliveries aimed at middle stump can angle into the batter's arm rather than hitting the bat. Ricky Ponting famously wore a forearm guard after suffering a forearm fracture from a fast bowler earlier in his career.
Frequently asked questions
Do junior cricketers need chest guards?
Chest guards are recommended for juniors facing pace bowling, particularly from under-15 level upward where ball speed and bounce increase significantly. Governing bodies including Cricket Australia and ECB recommend that all juniors facing pace above a certain speed threshold wear helmet, gloves, pads and inner thigh pad as a minimum, with a chest guard added when facing genuine fast bowling. Coaches should assess pitch conditions and bowling pace before each session.
Is there a law against a batter wearing too much protective equipment?
The Laws of Cricket do not restrict the amount of protective equipment a batter may wear provided it does not deliberately obstruct fielders and is not used as a tool (for example, using oversized equipment to deflect the ball). In practice, comfort and mobility are the main constraints: batters wearing too much padding find it difficult to play attacking shots and move quickly between wickets. The umpires have no authority to remove protective equipment unless it creates an unfair play situation under the Laws.