Drones, Bat Sensors & VR: ICC Champions Trophy 2017 Is The First ‘Smart Cricket’ Tournament

“[This] tech will be hugely beneficial across the board,” said Nasser Hussain, former England captain and now commentator. “As a broadcaster we talk about [cricketing] terms but never quantify them. 

“As a coaching tool it could be vital. When I first started batting for England [in the early 1990s], I never saw myself on TV. But I was playing in Jamaica [versus the West Indies] and got out. Geoff Boycott [former England cricketer] yelled at me when I would never get any runs with my open bat face. I had no idea.” 

At the Champions Trophy, all eight teams have elected batsmen to trial the device, which weighs less than 25 grammes. Data will be fed to broadcasters, and individual players will be able to see their results, but Richardson said there would be no central repository to aid scouting. 

“This is the start of the process, we don’t know how it can be used on the coaching side,” said Richardson, in response to a question from Silicon. “We can develop [the model] as time goes on. At the ICC, we don’t want to use these things as gimmicks. 

Coaching tool 

But away from the elite level, Batsense is going to be available as a commercial product, built by partners Speculur. The device will be available from August and cost $150 in all major cricket playing nations. 

“We think this of a technology that can be the difference between playing club cricket and international cricket,” declared Dua. 

Intel has partnered with a number of other sporting events, including La Liga, the X Games and the PGA Tour, claiming sport is a high profile example of how data and IoT can transform other industries. It was attracted to cricket because of its stat-heavy nature with strike rates, batting angles and bowling speeds ready to be analysed. 

“it’s a lot of new stuff. Some of it is edgy, pushing what has been a purists game, “added Dua. “We recognise it’s all new and could be potentially uncomfortable but you only get to a new state if you push the boundaries. The ICC have embraced this.” 

Hussain said there is no right or wrong way in how this information could be used and that it could can be ignored entirely by traditionalists, but he also  warned that coaches and broadcasters owed it to themselves to keep up with a rapidly changing game. 

However he reiterated that technology would never replace intuition or pick a team, citing the ridicule paid to former England coach Peter Moores when he said he would have to look at the data as to why England departed from the 2015 World Cup at the group stage. 

“Data is very useful but it will never replace gut feel,” he said. “You can’t touch that.” 

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