Turning the head - anybody do it?

[The Squirrel]

Top batters may say that, but that's not what happens. It's been studied:




Source - https://www.nature.com/articles/nn1200_1340

This stuff has been known in sports science for a while, the time involved in hitting a fast moving ball in elite sports generally means that human reaction times make it almost impossible to track the ball. The best athletes use early information and experience of where that means the ball will end up to be able to hit the ball. It helps they typically have faster reactions and better coordination than an average person, so they have a bit more information to base their prediction on, but it's still a prediction.

All completely different from your original suggestion that the batsman is mainly watching the bowler of course.

I appreciate you are coming at this from a position of not knowing about cricket, but you do realise that 200ms after its bounce for a typical ‘good length’ delivery, the ball will have reached the batsman - or very nearly so? An elite bowler you have less than 500ms from release to the ball reaching you, and the ball normally bounces about 2/3 of the way down the pitch.

At the extreme end, if you’re facing peak Jeff Thompson then 200ms after bounce you’ve already had the impact of the ball into your gonads taking place (but due to the limits of nervous transmission speed have about 100ms more of pain free existence to enjoy ).

The paper also says that tracking was less accurate/complete but did not stop after the post-bounce 200ms as the ball approached.

Nobody is suggesting that players literally watch the ball onto the bat (for front foot strokes they cannot see through the bat!) but they will track the ball for near enough all its flight and get as close to this ideal as possible (excepting short pitch deliveries where evasive action prevents this). The higher skill player seemed more effective at quickly predicting where the ball would bounce then focussing particularly on that spot - I’d guess there’s a physiological limit to how fast binocular vision can focus so makes sense that they would learn to use the best focus the eye can achieve on that point.

From a coaching point of view though, the advice to watch the ball onto the bat is definitely correct, and this is what top players do (as far as it is possible for the human eye/brain to perceive) even if this is not possible in the most determinedly literal scientific sense.

 

[Golf is fun]

All completely different from your original suggestion that the batsman is mainly watching the bowler of course.

I appreciate you are coming at this from a position of not knowing about cricket, but you do realise that 200ms after its bounce for a typical ‘good length’ delivery, the ball will have reached the batsman - or very nearly so? An elite bowler you have less than 500ms from release to the ball reaching you, and the ball normally bounces about 2/3 of the way down the pitch.

At the extreme end, if you’re facing peak Jeff Thompson then 200ms after bounce you’ve already had the impact of the ball into your gonads taking place (but due to the limits of nervous transmission speed have about 100ms more of pain free existence to enjoy ).

The paper also says that tracking was less accurate/complete but did not stop after the post-bounce 200ms as the ball approached.

Nobody is suggesting that players literally watch the ball onto the bat (for front foot strokes they cannot see through the bat!) but they will track the ball for near enough all its flight and get as close to this ideal as possible (excepting short pitch deliveries where evasive action prevents this). The higher skill player seemed more effective at quickly predicting where the ball would bounce then focussing particularly on that spot - I’d guess there’s a physiological limit to how fast binocular vision can focus so makes sense that they would learn to use the best focus the eye can achieve on that point.

From a coaching point of view though, the advice to watch the ball onto the bat is definitely correct, and this is what top players do (as far as it is possible for the human eye/brain to perceive) even if this is not possible in the most determinedly literal scientific sense.

That was never my suggestion, I actually said:

I've never played cricket, so can't comment with authority on that, I'd assume though elite players know where the ball is going based on the shape of the bowler, more than relying on tracking the ball. This is certainly how baseball and tennis work, of course players will track the ball a bit, but they use a lot more external signals.

Given I made it clear I've never played cricket and that it was just an assumption, from what I've learnt I don't think what happens is that wildly different, the batsman looks at how the bowler releases the ball, predicts where the ball will bounce, looks there, sees how it bounces and then hits it. I still stand by this and would bet if there is a data set comparing batting performance against a real bowler vs a machine, it's easier to bat against a real bowler because of the additional cues that the machine doesn't give.

However my point was in golf the ball isn't moving, you can predict where it will be very easily, it will be in exactly the same spot it always was, barring freak winds or weird lies, so you don't need to keep looking at it to predict this, as long as you have a moderate amount of body awareness you can hit the ball.
What would be interesting would be to see what effect it had if people spent some time hitting balls with their eyes closed. The requirement to focus on feeling where the club is in space, and just swinging might free them up.