This is in the times - there is a video to go with it, but only available if you have a subscription - here is the commentary...
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/cricket/article3582398.eceEd Smith
Last updated at 12:01AM, October 29 2012
Man versus machine. It is an age-old argument. In the early 19th century, a chess machine called The Mechanical Turk toured Europe and the United States, beating top players and wowing audiences. A mechanical human doll moved the pieces. It sat on a wooden box that was covered by fabric drapes on all sides. The operators opened the doors to reveal — apparently — an elaborate system of pulleys and levers. Its inventors announced that a machine had finally been invented that was cleverer and more strategic than human intelligence.
Cricket has long been searching for its own Mechanical Turk — a bowling machine that can provide top-quality practice for elite batsmen, without getting knackered (as human bowlers tend to do). But the conventional bowling machine, which relies on a team-mate or coach dropping the ball into a chute that spits the ball out at up to 90 miles per hour, is only useful up to a point and can be counter-productive.
There is a danger of honing a technique that becomes adapted for facing machines rather than human beings. Rhythm — your feet, body and bat swing moving in sync with the arrival of the ball — is arguably the most important thing of all. And you can mess up your rhythm by facing too little real bowling, and too much machine “bowling”. Instead of training fluidity and responsiveness, machines can encourage premeditation and leaden footwork.
Enter ProBatter, a new machine that mimics the whole experience of facing elite bowlers — their run-up and delivery stride — not just the trajectory of the ball (which, taken in isolation, is actually quite a small part of the story).
ProBatter combines two existing technologies to create something quite unlike either. First, it is a bowling machine, similar to the conventional ones used around the world. Second, it is a sophisticated cinema system that replicates the experience of watching an elite bowler bowl at you. Here is the crucial thing. ProBatter is able to sync, almost perfectly, the timing of the television footage with the delivery of the ball by the bowling machine.
Imagine being in a cinema watching a life-sized Dale Steyn run towards you and bowl, as he does in matches. Now imagine that there is a small hole in the cinema screen, exactly where Steyn’s hand is at the point of delivery. Out of this hole — from his “hand” — a ball is flung at you. And not just any ball: the exact same ball that his action would have delivered in real life.
There is only one ProBatter, at the ECB National Performance Centre in Loughborough. ProBatter allows England’s players to bat against simulated versions of all the world’s top bowlers: from Morné Morkel to Murali. During my trial, Graham Thorpe, now an ECB coach, operated the computer that tells ProBatter what to bowl (ProBatter is able to adapt the television footage to recreate an inswinger, outswinger or bouncer).
Surely he would line up a few easy looseners for me to get my eye in? “Dale Steyn,” Thorpe said simply. Thanks, Graham.
What was it like? The first thing that struck me was the quality of video. There would be some value in watching the screen, even without the ball arriving at all. All cricket coverage is now taken from behind the bowler’s arm — so batsmen don’t see the ball leaving the hand (until the 1980s, cricket was broadcast from one end only, so half the time replicated the batsman’s perspective). ProBatter, at the very least, shows you what the bowler’s action is like front-on and life-size.
But it does much more than that. The delivery of the ball is remarkably well synced. It is not, of course, exactly like facing a real bowler. The problem is hard to avoid: the “bowler” is moving; the hole from where the ball emerges is static. So, as the batsman, you have to move the focus of your vision from a moving subject to a stationary one. This is hard in a split second. After a few balls — including a faint nick off Steyn — I realised I had to watch primarily the hole rather than the arm.
A big advantage of ProBatter is familiarisation. The ace card of a mystery spinner is that batsmen are not used to him. When Saqlain Mushtaq, who pioneered the doosra, first arrived on the scene, he dismissed countless newcomers by bowling a doosra early in their innings. After hundreds of hours facing normal off spin, batsmen instinctively turned the face of the bat, expecting the ball to spin towards leg. It would go the other way, catching a leading edge — and looping back to Saqlain.
Of course, the best way to avoid that mistake is to “pick” it. But even if you don’t pick each variation every time, it helps to be familiar with the challenge. Mystery spin, by definition, is much easier once it has been demystified. You may never master a mystery spinner. But there is less to fear when you are used to him.
I was impressed by ProBatter’s simulations of Ajantha Mendis and R. Ashwin, two mystery spinners who I never faced in my playing career. Ashwin, who England can expect to face in India, has four main balls: off break, top spin, arm-ball, carrom ball (or “wrong-un”). In only a few balls on ProBatter, I started to get a sense of what they look like — the actions he uses, and the varying speed of the ball. Real experience in the middle would be far better. But ProBatter is the next best thing.
Would I have used ProBatter? Definitely. Not too much, but as part of my broader routine. I would have factored in the understanding that it is not qualitatively the same experience as a match. But it remains a useful stepping-stone.
The Mechanical Turk, by the way, was an elaborate hoax. Inside the inner wiring sat a human being: the German chess master, William Schlumberger. But having walked around ProBatter, I’m satisfied that Steyn wasn’t hiding behind the screen, hurling the ball at me. No, it is the real thing. That is to say, it is the real “fake” thing.
It is ironic. Once, we hid human beings inside machines. Now we get machines to imitate human beings. Ah, progress!
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Topic: Pro Batter (Read 2742 times)