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Pace aces turn to missile technology

Australia leading the charge with revolutionary means of monitoring fast-bowling workloads

Australia's fast bowlers are using missile-guiding technology to help monitor their workloads thanks to a revolutionary algorithm developed at the Australian Catholic University.

With an explosion in player workloads over the past decade due to the onset of Twenty20 cricket, the issue of ensuring fast bowlers in particular are kept free of injury has been a challenging one for support staff, coaches and the pacemen themselves.

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Sports scientists at ACU's School of Exercise Science assessed the current means of workload monitoring – which looks at how many balls any individual bowls in both matches and training – and broke it down further to factor in the effort or intensity involved in each of those deliveries.

"Tagging individual balls with an intensity measure provides both immediate analysis such as identifying effort balls, or potentially a drop in performance due to fatigue, or longer term workload analysis," said sports scientist and researcher Dean McNamara in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

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"Measuring bowling intensity for individual balls or sessions provides context for the acute and chronic workload of the individual bowler, and ultimately the preparedness of the bowler for the maximal workload of the immediate competition."

The newly-devised wearable technology, adopted by Australia's players, is more common to a military scenario.

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"The same technology is used to navigate submarines, guided missiles and spacecraft," co-author Dr Tim Gabbett said.

"Once the technology detects a ball bowled by the fast bowler, measures of bowling intensity can be attached to that individual delivery," the article explained.

"Tagging individual balls with an intensity measure provides both immediate analysis such as identifying effort balls, or potentially a drop in performance due to fatigue.

"These microtechnology devices offer a stable measure of bowling 'load' across repeated bowling spells."

Australia's ODI squad is scheduled to play a tri-series in the Caribbean against West Indies and South Africa, beginning June 5, while the Test side next visits Sri Lanka in July. 

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