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The eyes have it
By Scott last year, at the start of October Leave a comment on this post
They sure do things different in Queensland.
The Bulls have experimented with glasses that have had their bottom half blacked out and others that have been blurred in a bid to sharpen batsmen’s focus and concentration skills.
“I felt they were quite useful,” experienced batsman Martin Love said. “With the blacked-out glasses you lose sight of the ball three or four metres before it gets to you, so you start reaching for the ball and hitting it in the air. Eventually you adjust and start waiting for the ball to come to you and hit it later.
“When you give the glasses away you tend to hit the ball later. That is what we are trying to achieve (on seaming wickets) at the Gabba where you can get into a lot of trouble by playing too early.”
Bulls coach Terry Oliver sanctioned the experiment with partially blacked out glasses after it was suggested by optometrist Pat Gerry while Love, a physiotherapist, suggested the blurred glasses after seeing them at a sports medicine conference.
“Research showed because vision was so poor with the blurred glasses on, batsmen tended to concentrate better and ended up timing the ball better,” Love said.
The Bulls have also experimented batting in the blacked-out glasses with a bat half the width of a normal sized blade in an extreme test of their batting skills.
The experiment took old-timers back to the days when South African great Barry Richards used to turn his bat sideways and point its edge to the bowler to challenge himself against bowlers he considered mediocre.
I’d never thought about batting practice in this way. I wonder if any readers have been involved in similar schemes in their net sessions?
Tags: , barry-richards, batting, martin-love, queensland |
5 Responses to “The eyes have it”
October 4th, 2007 at 12.31 pm
October 4th, 2007 at 10.15 pm
“The experiment took old-timers back to the days when South African great Barry Richards used to turn his bat sideways and point its edge to the bowler to challenge himself against bowlers he considered mediocre.”
I remember hearing/reading somewhere that Barry used to plan on hitting the ball so that it made it more difficult for the bowler to bowl! ie, hit the shinier side more often or something like that. Anyone remember what I’m talking about?
October 5th, 2007 at 2.36 pm
We used to play squash in university without any court lights - some light from the stands used to filter through. It definitely helped us focus on the ball better when the court lights came on. I guess it works the same way for cricket too
October 9th, 2007 at 5.03 pm
‘net bat’s’ - ie half width, are sold by quite a few bat makers. As for the glasses - never heard of it but sounds intriguing.
On the face of it, it sounds a little like the effect you get when comming off the motorway onto a suburban street - everything feels slower because your brain has accelerated its information processing. The effect is temporary however so its use in cricket might be negligable. However, it would help with ‘getting in’ assuming you’ve had one of these practice sessions immediately prior to batting.
October 13th, 2007 at 4.15 pm
Sounds like an adaptation of beer goggles.
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