Academics test whether top cricketers have 20/20 vision

Bradford University researchers have been given more than half
a million pounds to carry out the study.

Dr Brendan Barrett, one of the leaders of the work, said: “It seems obvious that good vision is a pre-requisite in many sports, such as a cricketer’s need to accurately anticipate the speed and direction of a fast-moving ball.

“But do elite cricketers have superior vision to non-elites or novices?

“And if elites do have superior vision to non-elites or novices, is this the cause or a consequence of their exceptional sporting performance? These are the 
questions we’ll be aiming to answer”.

The research is being led by Dr Barrett from the Bradford School of Optometry and Vision Science and Dr John Buckley from the university’s School of Engineering, Design and Technology.

The joint study also involves Liverpool John Moores University, the University of St Andrews and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).

Academics will assess “vision and visuo-motor skills” in elite cricketers and in non-cricketers to discover how the visual processing abilities of top-level players contributes to why they have reached the top of their sport.

The tests will involve setting up infra-red motion capture systems to measure and monitor how players catch balls fired from a machine and how they perform other high-speed interceptive tasks.

Dr Barrett added: “This is not about the player’s eyesight as it would be assessed during a standard eye exam.

“It’s about how well their brain extracts relevant information from what they see, and in particular how this is done when there is limited time available because the ball is travelling towards them at close to 100 miles an hour.

“It may well be that due to having highly-honed motor skills elite players don’t have to think about how to perform the task; how to hold their hands or where they should be placed to ensure success, and this then means their brain can concentrate more on processing the information they see, which is why they appear to have extra time when performing such tasks.”