Facing a 90mph Fast Bowler

A recent Test Match Special podcast featured Simon Hughes talking to Jonathan Agnew about batsmen’s eyesight, and in particular how batsmen cope with facing a bowler bowling at 90mph.

                  

Any regular readers of these blogs will not be surprised to hear that elite batsmen don’t follow the ball all the way. In fact, they don’t even attempt to. Instead they make a jump or “saccade” to the part of the pitch where they expect the ball to bounce.

                  

Saccades are nothing exceptional. If you are reading a book, every time you get to the end of a line your eyes will make a saccade to get to the next line. During that period when your eyes are making these jumps, your vision will be blurred, but this is suppressed by your brain so you don’t notice it.

                  

There are several people researching this area in both the UK and Australia, but in my opinion the foremost paper was by Mann, Spratford & Abernethy (2013). They found that elite batsmen make two distinct saccades: the first one to predict where the ball will bounce; and a second one to the predicted contact area between bat and ball. This enabled them to align their gaze with the contact area on 100% of good length deliveries, and 90% of short length trials. By contrast, sub-elite batsmen could align their gaze to the contact point on only 13% of good length deliveries (and 80% of short length ones).

The authors suggest that these saccades don’t just happen because the ball is going too fast to be tracked by the human eye. In fact, Croft, Button & Dicks (2009) found that even when the ball was bowled at speeds low enough to be tracked, batsmen still made saccadic movements to the predicted pitch point. It’s suggested that this enables elite batsmen to use their peripheral vision to concentrate on the path of the ball either side of the pitch point. By observing closely how the speed of the ball varies before and after pitching, as well the bounce of the ball after pitching, they are better able to predict the position and timing of the contact point between bat and ball.

One important distinction between elite and club batsmen found by Mann et al was that whereas club batsmen aligned their eyes with the ball (less saccadic movement), elite batsmen aligned their head with the ball. They use the analogy of a miner’s lamp attached to the head, which would shine on the ball throughout its path for the elite batsmen, but not for the club batsmen. So for the elite batsmen, if they didn’t make any saccades, the ball would stay in the centre of their vision, assuming they kept their eyes still as their head followed the ball.

Even when the elite batsmen do make saccades, their head still stays in alignment with the ball, despite the ball being in the periphery of their vision. The authors describe this ability to couple the head to eth movement of the ball as an “important hallmark of expertise in batting”. This may be related to the fact that there are neurons in the brain that respond to the position of an object relative to the head, regardless of where the eyes are looking. The suggestion is that these elite batsmen can use this information about where the ball is relative to their head to predict where the bat/ball contact will be, so they only need to concentrate on when it will happen.

The BBC website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zy476fr) contains some suggestions from the likes of Graham Thorpe as to how to prepare to face bowling of 90mph. One suggestion is for the coach to use a side-arm thrower, which is a cricketing version of the ball thrower used for dogs in the park. What’s needed is a smaller version of this that fits onto a bowler’s hand, so the ball can be bowled with a normal action, but comes out much faster (without being a beamer).

Then, the answer to the question of how to face a bowler bowling at 90mph, would be to practise facing a bowler at 95 or even 100mph.

Mind The Gap

A new batsman comes to the wicket. He surveys the field, making a careful note of the fielders’ positions. After blocking a few deliveries, he starts to play some more expansive shots, and hits them, unerringly, straight to the fielders.

From a ruck, the ball is passed to the first receiver who runs forward a couple of steps before being driven back in the tackle by two defenders.

A succession of crosses and corners fail to beat the first defender. When the winger does finally manage to locate his centre forward, the latter isn’t able to generate enough power in his header to trouble the goalkeeper.

What’s going on? The answer is that each player is telling his subconscious brain to pay attention to the position of the opposing players (or his own player in the last example). The brain is then told what skill to execute. The task is then carried out using those visual cues as targets.

Even if you told your brain something like “Don’t hit the ball to the fielder”, the subconscious brain, which doesn’t understand spoken language very well, just hears “hit – ball – fielder”.

The answer, if you’re a coach, is not to tell your players to look for where the fielders/defenders are, but to look for where the gaps are. So a new batsman would survey the field looking for those gaps, and maybe start visualising hitting the ball into those gaps. In net practice, you can put markers on the net to indicate fielding positions. But if the batsman doesn’t seem good at avoiding them, you might want to highlight the gaps between them using coloured markers.

You might also want to remind your players that cricket, rugby and football pitches are pretty large compared to the size of even adults. If they were a bird flying over the ground they would see lots of gaps. So in cricket, if there are few gaps in a ring of close fielders, they need to think about how they could safely hit the ball over them into those gaps. Imagining they were high above the ground looking down might help them.

In sports such as football and rugby, the task for coaches is to get their players to think of themselves as “space invaders”.

David Donner

The Problem With Cricket Nets

A few years ago I was umpiring a junior cricket match when a young man came out to bat when his side was in trouble, having lost early wickets for not many runs. He scored a rapid 50, which at least put his side back in with a chance of winning.

You might think I’d be impressed by this innings, yet I felt it encapsulated what is wrong with a lot of traditional coaching. Because whilst there were a lot of impressive strokes to the boundary, there were also a lot of horrendous misses and streaky edges (as well as a couple of dropped dolly catches).

It seemed to me as if nearly all his shots were pre-meditated, and I just had the impression that this was someone who spent a lot of time practising in nets, especially against a bowling machine. He clearly had a good eye, but had no idea how to build an innings, and wasn’t using all the available visual cues that are required for good decision making.

The great players in the past have generally learned their cricket by playing games in the street, park or beach. This meant that they could spend many hours developing their technique by self discovery, rather than learning to play in the way that a coach thought they should. But also, by playing games these players were able to develop the mental side of the game, as well as the ability to deal with unexpected challenges.

One cricket academy that tried to introduce a more game-centred approach was the Cricket Australia Centre of Excellence in Brisbane. They reduced the field of play to a 30-metre circle, marked by a low net. This meant that they could play games in which everybody was involved, but it also meant that they could put in a variety of conditions to challenge the players and develop their skills. For instance, the batsmen would have to hit the ball into specific zones in order to score runs. They could alter the sizes of bats and the types of balls, and make any number of changes to the rules of the game.

This type of approach can be used in most if not all sports. Although the method of learning is self discovery, the coach still has a crucial role to play, not least in setting up the game conditions, but also in using techniques such as questioning and feedback to aid that process of skill development.

More on feedback in cricket next time.

David Donner

Why Passes in Rugby Go Astray

Why do so many passes in rugby go astray? Even at higher levels of the game, many promising moves break down because the receiver has had to reach up, or even reach behind him (or her), to take the ball.

Sometimes, there will be technical reasons, such as passing off the wrong foot. Often, the pass from 9 to 10 will go high because the 9 has been imbalanced at the point of ball release. This can particularly happen if the front foot has come too far across. In an effort to maintain balance, the head comes back and up, with the result that the pass has an upwards trajectory.

But the main reason that passes go astray is that they have not been aimed properly, and this generally happens because rugby players are human beings. If one person is looking to see where another person is, it is natural to look for their face, just like you would look for somebody’s face in a photograph. But if you are looking at the receiver’s face when you pass the ball, it’s likely that the ball will go in the general direction of their face. If the receiver is running forwards, the ball may well disappear somewhere behind their head.

The other problem is that receivers like to read the intentions of the players inside them. In particular, they might want to see if the ball carrier is looking in their direction, so they can anticipate when the ball might be coming in their direction. In order to get a good view of the face, they come up almost level with the ball carrier. This means that the ball carrier has only three options, all of which are poor: a forward pass; a flat pass that the receiver can’t run onto; or a pass behind the receiver.

The answer is to train players, ideally from a young age, to use their vision effectively. How many coaches drum into their players that passes should be made for the receiver and not to the receiver? How many explain where the ball should be aimed, and how this varies according to the speed of the receiver? How many tell the receivers about being able to see the number on the back of the ball carrier’s shirt so they don’t overrun the ball?

Above all, are coaches using realistic opposed drills, so the players can put all this in the context of the timing of the pass, and whether to pass or not? If you are, then asking the right questions, even with young players, can lead to the players working out the answers for themselves. For instance, what are they looking for in the defenders that tells the whether to pass or dummy? What can they do in their footwork that would make them more effective?

But if players are taught in a mechanistic way, then you might as well just pick bigger and bigger wrecking balls, and not bother about the fact that they can’t pass a ball. Some would say, we’ve reached that point already.

David Donner

Sports Vision Casebook - Rugby Place Kicking

There are two main visual components of place kicking in rugby: alignment and visualisation.

There’s not going to be one correct method for alignment or visualisation for everyone, so there’s likely to be a certain amount of trial and error, for instance in choosing the type of kicking tee that suits you best.

The first part of alignment is to align the tee, and then the ball on the tee. Leigh Halfpenny aligns the tee with the centre of the posts and the seam of the ball with the right hand post, taking into account the natural draw for a right-footed kicker. Similarly, Jonny Wilkinson tilts the ball a little to the left, and Dan Carter at the start of his run up, aims for the left hand post.

As you move forward to kick the ball, the focus should be on the precise point of the ball where you want to make contact .This means picking a spot within the pattern of the ball, as small as a dimple, and keeping a constant fixation on that spot.

Some players have a tendency to lift their head as they kick, to watch the path of the ball. Lifting the head too early will result in a loss of power and control. If this is a persistent problem, you can try keeping a tennis ball under your chin to keep your head down.

When Johnny Wilkinson was taking kicks for England, he’d imagine that there was a lady called Doris whom he could see through the posts sitting in the crowd. I think at one time he imagined she was reading a newspaper. Then he imagined she was holding a drink which he would try and knock out of her hand. He would then have an imaginary line, like an imaginary wire, the ball would follow on its way through the posts to Doris.

Leigh Halfpenny visualises a third post in the middle of the other two. He aims to hit that middle post. If it’s a windy day, he moves that imaginary post slightly to compensate. He imagines that the sweet spot of the ball is attached by a piece of string to that third post. He looks back from the post down the piece of string.

A combination of these ideas might be very effective: for instance, you might imagine a real or fictional character sitting on top of the imaginary third post and pulling the string. Your aim would be to knock that character off their perch.

Visualisation can also be effective in dealing with the pressure of taking the kick. Halfpenny, for instance, always imagines his old training ground of Gorseinon, even when he’s in the Millennium Stadium.

Then it’s just a question of practice, and more practice. If you practice the more difficult kicks, it will make most of the match day kicks seem easier. Halfpenny even takes kicks form the try line to hit the post as a test of his accuracy.

David Donner

Sports Vision Casebook - Scrum Halves

The rugby players I’ve worked with most have been scrum halves, but I think I’d use a similar process for a player in any position.

We began by doing some profiling, which was something some of the players had done and some hadn’t. We looked at the skills required to be a great scrum half, dividing them up into technical, tactical, physical and psychological categories. We used this to work out which areas would be most useful for the players to work on so they could progress to the next level of the game.

I also tried to work out some of the visual requirements for being a scrum half. Whereas most people in this field would think of things like peripheral vision and visual acuity (seeing clearly), I wanted to concentrate more on how these players should use their vision in game situations. So I came up with a list that included things like identifying and focusing on targets when passing and kicking; scanning both sides of the field for overlaps and mis-matches; searching for areas of space behind the defence to attack; and analysing defenders at the ruck to aid decision making.

The players wanted most to work on their passing skills, which we narrowed down to speed and especially accuracy. I started off by getting them to pass a series of balls against a marker on a goal post. This was done from both sides, initially with balls on the ground. Some competition was introduced by timing them against each other. We then set up simulations of passing from a ruck (they had to dig out the ball from under my foot), and from a line out (I would toss the ball over my head for them to catch before passing).

This was all fine, but you’re not passing against a post in a match. In order to do this I needed a receiver, but I wanted to keep to the same levels of accuracy. So I’ve introduced a rule which begins by saying that the receiver must maintain the same body position as he moves forward to catch the ball: no stooping or jumping up allowed. Next, the receiver is also only allowed to move their arms below their elbow. And finally, they can only move their hands to catch the ball – no other arm movement is allowed. The scrum halves score a point for each pass that is successfully caught under these conditions.

I also videoed the players’ passing. It was interesting to see that one player kicked out his back leg as he passed the ball. He had clearly fallen into the habit of doing this in order to keep his balance, and was understandably reluctant to change his technique. I did feel, however, that this was a sign that he was inherently unstable when he passed, and this explained why he would sometimes lift his head when he let go of the ball. This also helped to keep his centre of gravity more central, and stopped him from falling over. Unfortunately, it also meant that the ball would fly over the receiver’s head.

David Donner