Batter's behaviour during training when facing a bowling machine and when facing a bowler

Abstract

In cricket, expert batters must develop anticipatory skills to enable them to respond effectively to a delivery by the bowler. The batter is required to judge the delivery and to move into an appropriate position to respond to it within a limited time (i.e. the delivery transit time can be as little as 450 ms for fast-paced bowlers). In training, the batter therefore needs to face numerous deliveries to hone this skill. However, because of the natural variation that occurs in bowling and the high impact experienced by the bowler, bowling machines are often employed to provide numerous similar deliveries for practice and to minimize the occurrence of overuse injuries to the bowler. The purpose of the study presented within this paper was to investigate how the batter reacts differently when facing a bowler and when facing a bowling machine. In a controlled single-subject pilot study a batter faced an unfamiliar bowler and also faced a bowling machine. The batter and the bowler or bowling machine were synchronously filmed using high-speed video cameras operating at 500 frames/s and the reaction of the batter was analysed under both conditions. It was seen that the batter lifted his bat backwards significantly earlier (0.999 s as opposed to 0.838 s before ball release) and lifted his front foot significantly later (0.002 s as opposed to 0.153 s before ball release) when facing the bowling machine and when facing the bowler respectively.

Hitting a cricket ball: what components of the interceptive action are most linked to expertise?

“…Given current speculation that the temporal aspects of a batsman's stroke (kinematics and swing ratio) is contingent on the mode of ball delivery (i.e. ball machine versus actual bowler; Renshaw et al, 2007;Pinder et al, 2009;Cork et al, 2010;Mann et al, 2010), there is an obvious need to verify the results of the current study, in particular the differences in movement organization between players of different skill levels (including expert cohorts), utilizing a bowler condition (see Pinder et al, 2009). We would predict that the ability to couple the front-foot stride with downswing of the bat and to exhibit low point variability in the timing of downswing relative to ball bounce and impact will be a defining feature of skilled performance in cricket batting regardless of the means of ball delivery, but this requires empirical verification.…”

A curve fitting methodology to determine impact location, timing, and instantaneous post-impact ball velocity in cricket batting

“…As a consequence of these difficulties, many existing batting biomechanical studies [6][7][8][9][10] disregard impact location as a measure of success, often choosing to focus solely on pre-impact bat and post-impact ball velocity, thus decreasing the ability to determine the causes of batting success. A simple categorical measure of the quality of bat-ball contact was implemented and validated for use by Mu¨ller and Abernethy, 11,12 consisting of live categorisation of each impact by a trained observer into good, bad, and no contact groups based on the resulting ball trajectory.…”

Biomechanics and visual-motor control: how it has, is, and will be used to reveal the secrets of hitting a cricket ball

“…Findings suggest that a significant decrease in the tight coupling between front-foot movements and bat-swing (e.g. Cork et al, 2010) is evident, and subsequently results in an inferior quality of hitting (see Pinder et al, 2009). These findings suggest that the coupling between perception and action is dependent on maintaining a naturalistic linkage between the two systems, as seen with the availability of advance information which affords anticipation when batting against a bowler in situ, and ensuring the preservation of the functional couplings between perception and action (Farrow & Abernethy, 2003).…”