Welcome cricketer! Thanks for joining this newsletter / blog, hopefully you'll find some interesting talking points in it and whether you agree or disagree all comments are welcome.
I'm a cricketer. I've played ever since I could walk and hold a bat and I've been fortunate enough to have been coached in my early years by some of the best, and to have played with and against players who have reached the highest cricketing standards.
In The Zone
The great thing about cricket is you don't have to reach any particular level to be a true cricketer. If you love the game and you practice and strive to improve, eventually, during a game, you will find yourself in "the zone" or as some people call it the bubble - that near magical place where you find you are so in-tune with what is going on and the part you are playing, that you are no longer "thinking" about what to do, you're instincts and more importantly your intuitions have taken over. This for me is truly being in the game - real cricket. Combine that with the competition and camaraderie that cricket allows you to experience and you have a sport like no other, and that's why we live and breathe it.
I love cricket, playing it, coaching it, watching it, talking about it, the equipment and especially the bats. There's nothing like the smell of raw linseed and there's no sound like the "crack!" of leather on willow.
I've been involved with coaching and youth development for a number of years and it was while I was coaching a group of our youth players out here in Southern California that I came up with the idea for the impact sheets. I don't know about you but I'm a visual learner, I find it much easier to change something if I can get some sort of visual feedback. What I was looking for was something that would show the guys where on the bat they were hitting the ball. By doing this they could make any necessary adjustments and improve their timing, and as we know, timing, although it might not be everything in cricket, it's damn important.
The CricTech Impact Sheets
What I came up with was the impact sheet - a simple adhesive backed sheet that marked every time a ball hit it. These things worked a treat. While I was testing them I noticed something which at first seems obvious - there were a few different guys in the nets using the impact sheets and practicing their drives, all using regular cricket balls being thrown down at roughly the same speed. While one guy was consistently hitting the ball at 5" from the toe of his bat, another was hitting at around 7.5" and the third at 8.5". Not that surprising but I've always been told that on slow, low wickets you are best with a low middled bat and on fast bouncy tracks you need a bat with a high middle. The results I was getting had nothing to do with the bounciness or speed of the wicket but one guy needed a high middled bat and another would have been better with a low sweet spot. It got me thinking that the speed or bounciness of the wicket didn't have any effect on what sort of profile bat you were best suited to so I went out and tested it. Lot's of batsmen from different countries batting in every condition facing different speeds of bowling. None of it mattered. If you hit your drives 7' from the toe on a slow wicket facing a skidy, low arm spin bowler you'll still hit your drives at 7" from the toe on a fast bouncy track facing a 6'5" quick. Your shot selection will be different but where you hit the ball for your drive won't change.
Measuring the Sweet Spot
And that got me started. Now I could measure where a batsman's optimum sweet spot should be. I didn't stop there I measured the whole range of attacking shots. I found that by measuring two particular types of shot played by a batsman I could place the sweet spot accurately and come up with an optimum profile of bat taking into account where he or she hit all their other attacking shots from.
After designing and testing a few different bats I went into business and started selling them to guys in my team, then my cricket league and eventually to cricketers from all over. The business is still small but it's great to be able to communicate with someone in Australia or India and deliver them a bat that is specifically designed to suit their technique and the feedback so far has been fantastic.
I've found that close to 6 out of every 10 batsmen are using a bat profile that does not suit their technique. If you hit the perfect cover drive with the wrong profile bat you could miss the sweet spot by 3 or 4 inches. It makes a big difference to the amount of power and control you can get.
If you would like to test to see if your bat profile suits your technique or if you are thinking of getting a new bat, get in touch with me and I'll give you a few different options to help make sure you have the right bat in your bag.
I'd be happy to hear any comments or field any questions you have about the analysis process or anything else you've read in this post that interests you.
cheers
Richard
I'm a cricketer. I've played ever since I could walk and hold a bat and I've been fortunate enough to have been coached in my early years by some of the best, and to have played with and against players who have reached the highest cricketing standards.
In The Zone
The great thing about cricket is you don't have to reach any particular level to be a true cricketer. If you love the game and you practice and strive to improve, eventually, during a game, you will find yourself in "the zone" or as some people call it the bubble - that near magical place where you find you are so in-tune with what is going on and the part you are playing, that you are no longer "thinking" about what to do, you're instincts and more importantly your intuitions have taken over. This for me is truly being in the game - real cricket. Combine that with the competition and camaraderie that cricket allows you to experience and you have a sport like no other, and that's why we live and breathe it.
I love cricket, playing it, coaching it, watching it, talking about it, the equipment and especially the bats. There's nothing like the smell of raw linseed and there's no sound like the "crack!" of leather on willow.
I've been involved with coaching and youth development for a number of years and it was while I was coaching a group of our youth players out here in Southern California that I came up with the idea for the impact sheets. I don't know about you but I'm a visual learner, I find it much easier to change something if I can get some sort of visual feedback. What I was looking for was something that would show the guys where on the bat they were hitting the ball. By doing this they could make any necessary adjustments and improve their timing, and as we know, timing, although it might not be everything in cricket, it's damn important.
The CricTech Impact Sheets
What I came up with was the impact sheet - a simple adhesive backed sheet that marked every time a ball hit it. These things worked a treat. While I was testing them I noticed something which at first seems obvious - there were a few different guys in the nets using the impact sheets and practicing their drives, all using regular cricket balls being thrown down at roughly the same speed. While one guy was consistently hitting the ball at 5" from the toe of his bat, another was hitting at around 7.5" and the third at 8.5". Not that surprising but I've always been told that on slow, low wickets you are best with a low middled bat and on fast bouncy tracks you need a bat with a high middle. The results I was getting had nothing to do with the bounciness or speed of the wicket but one guy needed a high middled bat and another would have been better with a low sweet spot. It got me thinking that the speed or bounciness of the wicket didn't have any effect on what sort of profile bat you were best suited to so I went out and tested it. Lot's of batsmen from different countries batting in every condition facing different speeds of bowling. None of it mattered. If you hit your drives 7' from the toe on a slow wicket facing a skidy, low arm spin bowler you'll still hit your drives at 7" from the toe on a fast bouncy track facing a 6'5" quick. Your shot selection will be different but where you hit the ball for your drive won't change.
Measuring the Sweet Spot
And that got me started. Now I could measure where a batsman's optimum sweet spot should be. I didn't stop there I measured the whole range of attacking shots. I found that by measuring two particular types of shot played by a batsman I could place the sweet spot accurately and come up with an optimum profile of bat taking into account where he or she hit all their other attacking shots from.
After designing and testing a few different bats I went into business and started selling them to guys in my team, then my cricket league and eventually to cricketers from all over. The business is still small but it's great to be able to communicate with someone in Australia or India and deliver them a bat that is specifically designed to suit their technique and the feedback so far has been fantastic.
I've found that close to 6 out of every 10 batsmen are using a bat profile that does not suit their technique. If you hit the perfect cover drive with the wrong profile bat you could miss the sweet spot by 3 or 4 inches. It makes a big difference to the amount of power and control you can get.
If you would like to test to see if your bat profile suits your technique or if you are thinking of getting a new bat, get in touch with me and I'll give you a few different options to help make sure you have the right bat in your bag.
I'd be happy to hear any comments or field any questions you have about the analysis process or anything else you've read in this post that interests you.
cheers
Richard
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