Pads (also called leg guards) are protective equipment used by batters in the sports of cricket and baseball, and by goaltenders in hockey, bandy and lacrosse. They serve to protect the legs from impact by a hard ball or puck at high speed which could otherwise cause injuries to the lower leg.
In cricket, pads fall into two types, batting pads and wicket-keeper's pads. In Test and first-class cricket, the pads are white (to match the rest of the player's whites), while in limited overs cricket they may be coloured.
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Batting pads are large, protecting shins, knees and a of lower thigh above knees, with a slot for the foot. Pads are one of the several protective gears wore by the cricketers while batting. Also known as leg guards, pads are wore on the legs by the batsman or the wicket keeper to protect them from the hard leather ball. Most pads have three velcro straps to fasten them to your leg, making them easy to adjust. A special knee roll is provided to protect knees from the ball. Traditional pads have ribs made up of cane wood to provide more protection, running vertically up to the knee roll. Professional players also include extra padding beneath the pads to encounter the impact from the ball generally delivered at a speed ranging from 80 to 90 miles per hour (130 to 140 km/h).
Modern day pads are made up of durable, strong and ultra light synthetic material like PVC to avoid fatigue caused by wearing them for a long time. Traditional pads were made up of cotton, foam and cane wood strips covered by a white cloth, making them heavy.
Originally, wicket-keepers used batting pads to protect their legs, but found the knee-protecting flaps interfered with their agility and ability to catch. There were also incidents where the ball lodged in the space between the flap and the wicket-keeper's leg. Modern wicket-keeper's pads are therefore smaller than batting pads, with insignificant knee flaps. Instead of three flaps these modern wicketkeeping pads contain two flaps - one at the bottom and the other one just below the knees.
In stick-and-ball games, goalkeepers, exposed like batters in cricket or baseball to hard balls on their legs, adopted and modified leg pads from cricket to allow for safer work and for tactics that would otherwise be impossible.
In ice hockey, the goaltender wears large leg pads to protect him from low-down impact by a puck. To prevent these leg pads giving him advantage in defending the goal, there are restrictions on their size, which in recent years have been tightened by the National Hockey League. Traditional ice hockey leg pads were made of leather, but now lighter synthetic materials are used.
In lacrosse the goaltender wears leg pads to protect against the impact of shots low down (since the net is fairly low). There are restrictions on the dimensions of these pads, but unlike in ice hockey these relate to the depth of the pads.
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