The A - Z of Sports Vision - Watch The Ball

In the recent 6 Nations rugby there were some classic examples of players knocking the ball on because they had taken their eyes off the ball, usually because they are distracted by a player about to tackle them. But then in football, players are often accused of “ball watching”, when they are so concentrated on the ball that they don’t notice that a player has been left unmarked.

But if that’s confusing, you would think that the requirement to watch the ball in sports such as tennis or cricket would be sacrosanct. However, numerous studies have shown that this isn’t exactly the case: the ball is actually travelling too fast to do this. One of the first was Land & Mcleod (2000) who found that elite batsmen followed the ball for a while before switching their vision to where they predicted the ball would bounce, and then tracking the ball from there until they hit the ball with their bat. Some batsmen, however, are more elite than others. A recent study (Mann, Spratford & Abernethy, 2013) studied two batsmen who had played more than 70 Tests matches, averaging over 45 (I suspect one of them might have been Matthew Hayden), as well as two club-level cricketers. They batted against a ball-projection machine that displayed a life-sized video projection of a bowler in his run up. At the moment of ball release a ball was actually released through a hole in the screen. The participants wore an eye-tracking device that the direction of the head and gaze when batting. They found that the elite batsmen tended to keep their gaze either in alignment with, or ahead of the ball. In contrast, the club batsmen were more likely to have their gaze either in alignment with or behind the ball. The latter only had their gaze ahead of the ball for short-pitched deliveries, and only then for a short period of time after the ball had bounced and before they made contact with the bat. On average the elite batsmen directed their gaze further ahead of the ball, and for a longer time, than the club players. In particular, elite players directed their gaze ahead of the ball immediately prior to hitting it with their bat, whereas club players tended to be behind the ball at this crucial time. Elite batsmen were found to couple their head movement more closely to the movement of the ball, especially as it got nearer to them. They also moved their gaze further in advance of their head direction. In other words, the elite batsmen closely aligned their head with the direction of the ball, whereas club-level batsmen more closely aligned their eyes with the ball. Sometimes the elite batsmen would have their gaze so far in advance of the ball that the image of the ball would be in their peripheral vision; but they still managed to keep their head aligned with the ball. The authors liken this to using a miner’s torch on your head to keep a spotlight on a moving object. Whereas Land & McLeod had found that better players made one saccade (where the eyes jump to a new location) to where they expected the ball to bounce, and then tracked the ball to contact, these elite players made a second saccade after the bounce of the ball to where they anticipated the contact would be. This second saccade was made for balls that were either short of a length or on a good length. Club players were much less likely to make a second saccade. All players made just one saccade when the ball was of a full length, but the elite players’ saccade took them past the bounce point to the predicted contact point, whereas that of the club players tended to lag behind the contact point. The coupling of the head to the movement of the ball seems to help the elite batsmen predict where the contact point will be. Crucially, this meant that the elite players were more likely to have a sharp focus on the contact between bat and ball compared with the club players. “Keep your head aligned with the ball” would not be a particularly helpful instruction to aspiring young batsmen, even though it seems to be what’s required at an elite level. I think the best coaches could advise would be to watch the bowler’s action carefully (so you can predict where the ball will bounce and what type of delivery it will be), carefully note where the ball pitches, and try and watch the contact point between bat and ball. David Donner