A Novel Training Tool for Batters to ‘Watch the Ball’

The mantra to ‘watch the ball ’ is one of the most fundamental and often-heard instructions in the game, but are coaches actually able to coach it? This presentation will address a series of studies which have examined the role of vision in cricket batting, and in particular how good vision must be for successful batting, and the role of implicit visual skills in the development of expertise in batting. As a result of these studies, a novel training tool will be proposed to implicitly enhance the concentration of skilled cricket batters. Vision is clearly important for the performance of hitting skills like those demonstrated by elite cricket batters. This has lead to the natural assumption that excellent cricket batters may have some form of ‘above-normal ’ vision, and that any action taken to improve their visual skills would result in direct improvements in batting performance. This assumption has been challenged by studies of sporting expertise which typically advocate vision to be a poor predictor of sporting success. Rather than relying on superior visual skills, these studies suggest that excellent cricket batting is more likely to be underpinned by highly developed perceptual-cognitive, psychological, and motor skills. This viewpoint is supported by the relatively common occurrence of anecdotal stories of sportspeople, including cricketers, who have been highly successful performers despit