Industry partnership: Cricket NSW

This is just one initiative of The Cricket Lab, a landmark strategic partnership between Cricket NSW and UTS that’s set to revolutionise cricket at all levels.  

The five-year collaboration focuses on research, education and innovation, with an emphasis on enhancing the performance of both elite players and community cricketers. 

The Cricket Lab – a landmark strategic partnership 

The initial focus of The Cricket Lab will be to cultivate innovation while improving collaborative and original research outcomes and opportunities.  

Cricket NSW CEO Lee Germon says the benefits of the collaboration would have a big impact on the future of cricket. 

“We see UTS as exactly that,” Germon continues. “Together we have created a long-term partnership that will be mutually beneficial and delve into almost every area of our business.”    

Distinguished Professor Aaron Coutts from the UTS School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation says the breadth of opportunity for UTS and Cricket NSW to work together to improve cricket player performance and development is vast. 

“From the use of biomechanics – identifying factors associated with performance and injury risk – to finding ways sport science and technology can make school, community and professional sport safer, this partnership will develop evidence-based methods for improving the health and performance of our athletes.” 

Project 130 – using data to accelerate fast-bowling performance 

One of the main initiatives of The Cricket Lab is Project130. An ambitious, world-first project, it aims to not only support athletes to break the 130kph barrier, but make it a sustainable achievement. 

Cricket NSW Performance Director, Patrick Farhart, says the gap between male and female fast-bowling speeds is wider than other areas of high-performance sport. 

Part of the reason for this may be that existing research focuses on male athletes, with female fast bowlers being coached based on male-dominant evidence. Project130 intends to close that gap, treating female athletes as their own unique group and undertaking cohort-specific research that can transition female bowling speeds from an average of 115kph to 130kph.  

To achieve this, the project team is exploring biomechanical, physical and anthropometric factors that contribute to ball release speed in elite and emerging female fast bowlers. 

Based on this research, the project is looking to identify key factors that can increase bowling speeds, with a long-term goal of branching into training interventions and talent identification. 

“Once we are able to profile what the correlations are with high speeds, then we can start to look at setting in place more individualised and targeted programs around getting bowlers to improve their speed.” – Patrick Farhart, Performance Director, Cricket NSW

Players like Tayla Vlaeminck and Darcie Brown from Australia, England’s Issy Wong and New Zealand’s Lea Tahuhu are already pushing the boundaries of fast bowling. NSW pace bowler Stella Campbell is one of the few who have reached speeds over 120kph. 

In helping these bowlers go even further, the potential of this pioneering research initiative is to transform the landscape of female fast bowling, introducing an era where high speeds are commonplace.  

For Cricket NSW, healthier clubs – encompassing the physical health and wellbeing of their membership, as well as community involvement and club administration – improve participation in the sport as a whole.  

By uplifting local clubs, programs like Hat Trick create improved pathways for people to play the game and progress from community cricket to the pre-elite and elite levels of cricket. 

Player Journey Intelligence Project – improving talent pipelines through machine learning 

The Cricket Lab builds on UTS’s existing relationship with Cricket NSW. The UTS Data Science Institute (DSI) has been working closely with Cricket NSW since 2021 on projects such as the Player Journey Intelligence Project.  

For that project, UTS DSI analysed the journey of cricketers through school, club and representative cricket. 

With the aim of improving talent pipelines, the project used machine learning and clustering techniques to understand player retention dynamics.  

“We’re using cricket as a way to get the guys in, get them chatting to each other, having a hit, but also learning about small, manageable ways they can improve their health and mental fitness.” – Associate Professor Cristina Caperchione, Human Performance Research Centre