“The head must be kept upright and turned towards the bowler with the eyes as level as possible” (The MCC Cricket Coaching Book).
But why should the eyes be as level as possible? According to the MCC, only in this position can “the batsman focus both eyes together”. But if you look at an object and twist your head slightly, you’ll notice that things don’t go blurred or double. The reason is that the balance organs in the ears register this head tilt and, via the vestibulo-ocular reflex, produce a counter-rotation of the eyes to maintain clear vision.
Another reason that’s commonly given is that keeping the eyes level helps speed up your reaction time. I have been unable to find much evidence to support this claim, however. I did find one experiment that showed a link between head tilt and lower reaction times, but there are one or two problems with applying it to batting. Firstly, subjects had to react to a sound. They were also sitting down………in the dark.
Even if there were a link, how much of batting is to do with reaction times, anyway? Sir Donald Bradman was found to have slower reactions than the average University student. Yet, as Jim Laker said “Bradman always seemed to know where the ball was going to pitch, what stroke he was going to play, and how many runs he was going to score”. It seems that batting has more to do with anticipation than reaction times.
This is not to say that one shouldn’t have ones eyes level. For some batsmen it might help them focus on the bowler’s action and release of the ball, and for others it might be necessary to ensure a consistency of eye dominance between watching the bowler and playing the shot. But it suggests that there isn’t one perfect technique that should be employed by everyone, but it’s more a question of the individual’s brain working out (ideally subconsciously) what works best for them. And is it possible that the twisting that’s’ required in order to get the eyes level from a sideways stance contributes to the back injuries suffered by many batsmen?
Bradman did not have a classic technique. He was entirely self-taught, and didn’t play on a grass pitch until he was 18, having been brought up on concrete pitches covered in matting. He had an unusual grip, with his right hand nearly facing straight down the pitch, and the “V” of his left hand in line with the splice. His bat was closed and locked between his feet, and he picked it up at an angle of 45 degrees to the flight of the ball. None of this could be found in any coaching manual, and led to much criticism early in his career. He was, however, the master of seeing the ball early, and playing it late.
He also fits into the classic profile of an elite sportsman in having had essentially unlimited access to practice in his developing years whilst pursuing a range of sports. In Bradman’s case, he spent many hours playing imaginary Test matches, throwing a golf ball against the brick base of a water tank and hitting it with a stump. He was a highly proficient billiards player, played off a scratch handicap in golf for many years, and excelled in tennis, which he played before taking up cricket.
There are three key visual stages in batting: watching the bowler’s action and release of the ball; watching the pitch of the ball; and watching the contact between bat and ball.
By observing the bowler’s action, Test match batsmen are able to determine what type of ball a swing bowler is delivering (outswinger, inswinger, short ball) by the time the front foot has landed. They can also determine a leg spinner’s delivery (leg spinner or googly) by the same time from observation of the bowler’s wrist. Accurate determination of the length of the delivery seems to require some early tracking of the ball after release.
Land & McLeod (2000) monitored the eye movements of expert batsmen when facing a bowling machine. They found that even elite batsmen weren’t able to track the ball throughout its flight. They would track it for a while and then jump ahead to the point where they expected the ball to pitch. If the ball was short-pitched, they would make that jump in fixation earlier. If it was over-pitched, they could track almost the whole way.
A very quick delivery may pitch less than a quarter of a second after the bowler releases it. Because novices aren’t so god at anticipating the length of the ball, they make their jump to the bounce point too late. Either they’re still trying vainly to follow the path of the ball, or they are making their jump as the ball pitches. Because vision is suppressed when one makes this jumping (“saccadic”) eye movement, they can lose sight of the ball completely.
If the batsman knows the where the ball has pitched, and the speed at which it’s travelling, he can work out when it will arrive. The brain doesn’t actually work out these calculations in a mathematical way. Rather it develops rules of thumb based on long periods of practice. But it still needs to pick up information about the speed of the ball and where it’s pitched in order to make the correct shot decisions.
A sense of the speed of the ball is obtained from the time it took to leave the bowler’s hand to reach the bounce point. An adjustment then needs to be made for loss of speed after pitching. This is why batsmen generally need to play themselves in: so they can make the necessary adjustments according to whether the pitch is fast or slow.
According to Land & McLeod, the position that the ball pitched can be determined by the formula B/tanФ, where B is the height of the batsman’s eye and Ф is the angle that the batsman’s eyes have had to look down. So the more the batsman has to look down, the closer to him the ball has pitched. It may be, however, that the brain establishes the pitch point from more general principles of how far away things are, for instance by using the different images that form on the two retinas from near objects.
However the brain does it, one clear message should be that it’s more useful to tell a batsman to concentrate on where the ball has pitched, than a general “watch the ball” instruction. If you know accurately where the ball has pitched, you’re most of the way to knowing what shot to play and when. It can be useful to ask batsmen in the nets where they think the ball pitched, so they can feedback on their perception.
The final key visual stage is the contact between bat and ball. In other interception sports, such as tennis, focusing on the contact point has been shown to be highly important for elite players. Some imagine a hitting area into which the ball arrives, and they maintain focus on that area even after the ball has been hit. Batting tees can be useful aids in concentrating on the contact point.
Differences in batting style have been observed when facing a bowling machine compared with facing a bowler (Pinder, Ross & Davids 2006), such as shorter and later backswing and shorter stride length. As an umpire, I’ve seen young batsmen display excellent stroke-play, but with no idea of how to build an innings, no shot placement, and often pre-meditating the shot. They look like they’re playing in a net, rather than in a match. So there’s clearly a danger in over-relying on net practice, and bowling machines in particular, although they clearly have their place.
It is therefore useful to try and make the nets more like a match, for instance by having two batsmen alternating the strike, and by marking fielder’s positions on the nets. Ideally, an umpire could stand and make decisions as well as giving a notional score for each shot.
For more information please visit http://www.donneroptometrists.co.uk/sports-vision.htm
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