Numbers show game is not for softies

Firm’s wearable monitors topple long-standing stereotypes

Ever wondered what Martin Guptill’s heart rate is during a one-day match?

New Zealand company VX Sport has revealed intriguing performance statistics based on readings taken from cricketers, including the Black Caps.

VX Sport’s wearable technology produces and records specific performance data through a small electronic box that is attached to the athlete’s body.

Through the use of a GPS, accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope, over one million real-time data points can be collected for coaches and players during a typical 90-minute training session.

The cutting-edge player telemetry technology that has been used by many of New Zealand’s top sports teams including the All Blacks can calculate an athlete’s distance, number of sprints, body forces, accelerations, heart rate zones, metabolic power and more.

VX Sport high-performance director Jamie Tout helped gather and record data based on the performance of professional cricketers around the world.

The numbers revealed that the average heart rate of a player in an ODI cricket match is more than 120 beats a minute, while during a T20 match players can reach 160bpm — almost as high as a Super Rugby forward.

Professional cricketers can individually cover more than 12km in a one-day match and a staggering 25km during a test match.

Trout also revealed that top bowlers could run at up to 90 per cent of their top speed and reach an average of 34km/h.

Head of high performance at New Zealand Cricket Bryan Stronach has used the wearable technology while training players to help better understand the physical demand on each athlete’s body.

Stronach said VX Sport technology, which was launched in 2007, produced fascinating data that had challenged long-standing stereotypes.

“I think cricket, a number of years ago, was known as the lady-man sport because basically I don’t think too many people understood the demand of it,” Stronach told the Weekend Herald.

“As soon as you start getting analysis for GPS and heart rate you actually start understanding the demand of the sport — so we need to get their conditioning levels up to that level so they can handle it, and handle it repeatedly.

“I think that was a realisation when we started looking at this data, and actually it’s not the lady-man sport, you’ve got to be a heck of an athlete to deal with this.”

Stronach said the wearable technology had continued to “surprise” top cricketers with the heavy demand the game inflicts on their bodies.

“Initially I do think they were quite surprised, they knew it was tough work . . . but that demand, I don’t think they realised,” he said.

“When a bowler runs up to bowl, their ground reaction forces can be anywhere from eight to 12 times their bodyweight. For a 100kg guy that’s a lot of force going through their bodies, so you’ve got to be fit and you’ve got to be strong and fast to handle all those pressures.”

The founder of VX Sport, Richard Snow, wanted to develop a product that was both “challenging and interesting”, and said he wanted a technology that could help everyone from any sporting background.

“We’ve used the technology to track data on skydiving, snowboarding, mountain biking, jet skiing, wind surfing, and I even had it in a race car going around a circuit,” Snow told the Weekend Herald.

“It gives an insight and validation, it doesn’t replace a coach but it provides so much extra information and insight.”

VX Sport has recently developed its technology to be able to record further data such as the jump height of a basketball player.