Utilising GPS wearable technology to monitor external work demands of seam bowlers between playing formats
Authors:   , Vickers Jonathan 
Published: September 2024

It has been well established from previous time-motion analysis that seam bowlers have the greatest external work demands across all playing positions which has increased with the introduction of twenty over cricket (T20) to go alongside the traditional multi-day format (Petersen et al, 2010). Although it is established that the unique formats have different locomotion demands for all players including pace bowlers, it is not clear whether these differences affect run-up velocity (Maunder et al, 2017). Run-up velocity is seen as a key variable related to ball release speeds and better bowling performance whilst negative changes in run-up velocity throughout a match would be seen as an indicator of a pace bowlers’ inability to sustain high intensity efforts (Duffield et al, 2009). Previous time-motion analysis has centred almost exclusively on total external workload demands in cricket, whilst not investigating individual bowling events which perhaps does not show how bowling is affected by the unique playing format (Bray, 2016). Recent developments in global positioning systems (GPS) technology have been shown to be valid and reliable in auto-detecting bowling events in live competition therefore increasing the ease from which meaningful measures of bowling intensity can be gathered (McNamara et al, 2018; Jowitt et al, 2020). Therefore, the primarily aims of the study were to quantify the differences in run-up velocity and locomotion demands between multi-day (MD) and T20 cricket. Secondary was to access the variability of locomotion and run-up velocity within each of the formats. Five first class professional male pace bowlers (mean ± standard deviation) aged 27.33 ± 2.94 y, stature (183.20 ± 5.66 cm), and body mass (81.70 ± 3.26 kg) from a team playing in the top domestic league in English County Cricket wore GPS-accelerometery units during the 2022 playing season across 16 T20 fixtures and 16 days of MD cricket. Variables analysed were total distance (m), meterage (m/min), ball count, total duration (min), and maximal run up velocity (m·s-1). The main findings of the study showed daily fielding in MD to have significantly greater total distances, higher ball count, lower meterage, and a slower run-up velocity than T20 cricket (p < 0.001). Variability findings found run-up velocity to be non-significantly changed from first to last over in T20 cricket (6.42 ± 0.41 and 6.42 ± 0.38 m·s-1, p = 0.978) compared to MD where bowlers significantly increased their run-up velocity from first to last over (6.04 ± 0.43 and 6.23 ± 0.40 m·s-1, p < 0.001). This is an original study in its attempt to monitor and compare locomotive demands of pace bowling between and variability within playing formats from real world competition. The findings show that the increased total workload requirements in MD cricket will possibly make the bowler adopt a pacing strategy by having a slower run-up velocity to conserve energy throughout the fielding innings. This is different to T20 where the game is played at a higher intensity and with faster run-up velocities where pacing to mitigate against fatigue is not required. As bowling at greater speeds is sought after for match success, practitioners and coaches should attempt to adequately prepare bowlers physically as well as tactically conserve pace bowler’s energy to help maintain run-up velocities in MD closer to that seen in T20 cricket.