Introduction

Cricketing is essentially a sport of 3 skills: Batting, bowling, and fielding. A quality cricket team contains eleven players proficient at two or more of those skills; and each player on the team is there to play a specific role. Bowlers aim to take wickets and prevent the opposition team from scoring as many runs as possible; batters aim to score runs effectively and efficiently without getting ‘out’. All players are expected to field proficiently to disallow any extra runs being scored by the opposition batters. Cricket is a very cohesive sport: If the bowlers do not perform to the best of their abilities, extra pressure is placed on the batters to perform well, and vice-versa.

Cricket (being one of the most widely played games in the world) has millions of players, all of varying skill levels. They range from complete beginners with no prior knowledge of the game of its principles to the elite professionals, who usually play for their country, state, or franchise team. Clearly, there must be a reason why these professionals are where they are. Through thousands of hours of practice and training, they have honed their technique to a level capable of handling world-class bowlers for an extended period of time. Therefore, through an analysis of professional and amateur cricket batters, this blog will answer the question:

WHAT EFFECT DOES THE PROFICIENCY OF BATTING TECHNIQUE HAVE ON A BATSMAN’S ABILITY TO PLAY EFFECTIVELY?

 

Through the use of guiding questions, this biomechanical blog will assess the main biomechanical principles involved with playing the front foot drive in cricket. Following this, the differences in technique between professional and amateur players will be discussed. Finally, the implications of these differences will be analysed to determine what makes the professional players’ technique superior to the amateur players.