I was recently listening to a cricket podcast. The expert panel was
asked about the benefits of vision training, especially for late developers.
The experts agreed that generalised vision training was of little use, except
possibly as a psychological boost. Vision training that was done in the context
of the sport, however, might be helpful. Needless to say, those views echo my
own precisely.
One coach said
that it could be useful to patch one eye when practising bowling, batting or
fielding. He has got his batsmen on occasion to wear a patch over what he
called the “motor eye”, which is the eye that leads when we are tracking a
moving object. The idea was that this would “strengthen” the other eye. I think
he was on stronger ground when he suggested that because this was putting his
batsmen in a challenging position, so it would help them deal with other
difficult situations that they might encounter in a match, which is why his
players found it both challenging and useful. I’m certainly all for making
practice highly demanding, so that you are mentally and physically prepared for
the challenged that will come your way on match day.
I was reminded
of an experiment on eye dominance and tennis that I’ve discussed before. It was
found that blurring the non-dominant eye of elite tennis players had a
deleterious effect on performance, whereas fogging the dominant eye did not. This
rather paradoxical finding was explained by suggesting that the non-dominant
eye was essential for depth perception. Whilst this may well be true, I’m no
longer sure that it explains the findings as the dominant eye must also be
essential for really accurate depth perception.
I therefore
suspect that what happened in these tennis players was the same as happened to
the cricketers: when the dominant eye was blurred, it felt really strange, so
the players had to concentrate harder on the ball. In doing so, they were able
to perceive monocular cues such as image size, which meant that their depth
perception wasn’t actually too badly affected. When the non-dominant eye was
blurred, however, because the effect on vision was less noticeable, they made
little or no adjustment for it.
So, patching the
dominant eye can be a useful exercise, but it probably needs to be used sparingly.
It’s likely to result in adjustments to the body, such as a head tilt. If a
player doesn’t have really strong eye dominance, they could start switching
during competition, and if they don’t make the necessary compensatory
adjustments their timing and other judgements could be all wrong.
I’m not sure how
this relates to late developers, but I suspect it depends on why they are
developing late. It could help with getting them to concentrate on the ball as
it leaves the bowler’s hand, or help them get into line better. But if they are
late developers because they haven’t played much cricket, you would probably be
better leaving them to work this out for themselves. If the idea is to make the
practice more challenging, there are other ways of doing this, such as using
smaller balls and/or bats, or getting them to read markings on the ball as it
approaches.
Patching can be
useful in a number of sports. In golf, for instance, it could be used to ensure
that the player maintains eye dominance when switching from the ball to the
target. In rugby, you might notice that some players are not paying enough
attention to the passer’s hands as he passes the ball. This means that they are
late in reacting to the ball as it appears in front of them and therefore drop
it. One solution would be to patch the left eye for passes coming from their
left, and the right eye for passes coming from their right. This would then
require them to turn their head towards the passer so they pick up the flight
of the ball at the earliest stage. I would probably still be inclined to
achieve a similar effect by using smaller balls, balls of a dull colour that
are harder to see, or balls with numbers or letters on that the players have to
read out before they catch them.
Patching both eyes, otherwise known as blindfolding, certainly has a place for enhancing kinaesthetic feedback. But that’s for another day.
David Donner
