How technology is changing the way cricket is being played

For a greater part of its history, the world of cricket has been undisturbed and fairly conservative. Let’s not forget, this is a game where players break for tea. However, for over the last two decades or so, the game has embraced technology like never before. To the extent that some may argue that it’s made players, coaches, umpires, and other officials overly reliant on technology. 

With the 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup just over a week away, it seems like as good a time as any other to look back at how some of these technologies have influenced the game, how they have made decision making, and strategising, a far more scientific process than it ever was. 

STATSports smart vests

Sometime before the pandemic hit, a picture of Virat Kohli wearing what looked like a sports bra during a practice session went viral. Kohli was wearing a smart vest by STATSports. 

The UK-based company’s compression vest features a GPS tracker, an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a magnetometer. These gadgets don’t just track the wearer’s pace and body movement in 3D but also track fatigue and reveal how the body reacts to pressure.  

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Lighter than a tennis ball and infinitely more powerful and accurate than your average smartwatch, the STATSports smart vest is being used by teams all over to enhance player performance, strategise gameplay by leveraging the best aspects of a player, and even anticipate physical injuries. 

PitchVision

The video analysis technology designed in ’05 to help identify and groom talented players, aims to democratise detailed player analysis once accessible only to elite club- and national-level teams. PitchVision helps cricket coaches and bowlers at all levels of the game to analyse technique, pitching areas, and ball length. 

It doesn’t just help bowlers understand the best length to bowl but also where to pitch to take the edge of the bat. PitchVision can also help coaches analyse how much the ball turns on a normal pitch as well help analyse the quality of the pitch on that day. 

Smart equipment

Traditional willow bats, cork leather balls, and wooden stumps have been the mainstay of cricket for a greater part of the game’s history. 

Today, this very equipment is used not just to play but also track performance and arrive at better decisions. Smart bats with sensors embedded in the handle or the blade and are able to capture all kinds of data about the batter’s swing, shots, or spins. This offers better insights so batters can improve their stroke play and technique. 

Similarly, a smart cricket ball has a microchip that provides data about the ball’s speed and revolutions at different points in its journey from the bowler’s hand to the moment it hits the batter’s bat and then to the fielder or the boundary line.  

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By measuring the ball’s bounce, swing, drift, and dip, bowlers can better understand how to bowl better, and batters can better understand how to face them effectively. 

While smart bats and balls are not approved for use in games, they’re regularly used during training to better understand a player’s technique and improve on it. 

The Decision Review System

The Decision Review System (DRS) is an umbrella term for, well, a system consisting of several different tools.  

Hawk-eye

The Hawk-eye uses six strategically placed small cameras around the ground to track the trajectory of a ball from when it was released from a bowler’s hand right until it is hit. The images captured by the cameras at a rate of 1/100ths of a second, help determine how the ball would travel on an imaginary pitch, and also help umpires call out LBWs, which stands for leg before wicket, and results in a batter being declared out. 

UltraEdge

The UltraEdge, an improved version of the snick-o-meter, is a tool used to graphically show whether a ball actually hit the ball or not. This tool usually helps call out umpire decisions of batsmen being caught out behind the wicket. It is a small device attached to the stumps and detects sound frequencies when there is contact between the ball and the bat, or of the former with any part of the players’ body. 

These frequencies are then transferred to an oscilloscope, which is a device that helps convert these frequencies into a graphical form. Spikes in the graph help umpires identify any such contact and let them make the decision of whether to declare a batter out. 

Hot Spot 

The list doesn’t end there, though. Another tool used in the decision review system is Hot Spot. It refers to an infrared imaging system, wherein two infrared cameras on opposite sides of the ground are continuously recording an image of the gameplay and are used to determine whether a ball has struck the batter, his bat, or the pad. 

Any hits on the bat or the pad can be identified by a bright spot caused due to an increase in local temperature at the point of contact. The use for Hot spot technology is two-fold.

First up, there is referrals to the third umpire for decision making. However, in case it is not allowed, the technology is also used as an analytical aid for TV coverage of the match, along with other graphics such as scoreboards, Fergie’s Wagon Wheel, and more. 

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Next, we have cameras around the pitch and smart bails to help declare hit wickets or run outs as well. These cameras, placed around the stumps on the batting end of the pitch, help third umpires make their decision in case of a run-out, and judge accurately whether the batter reached the ‘safe-zone’ in time. 

Smart bails 

Lastly, there are smart bails that light up whenever the ball makes contact with them or the stumps, and they lose contact with the latter. Smart bails light up as fast within 1/1000th of a second, which helps the umpire and third umpire make accurate decisions when it comes to calling run-outs or hit wickets.  

The days when cricket was known as the gentleman’s game are long gone. Today’s cricket is gladiatorial, and technology plays a crucial role in helping these modern-day gladiators perform their best and those judging them arrive at better-informed decisions.