The progressive use of visual cues in skilled adolescent cricket batters

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the visual anticipation of skilled adolescent cricket batters during a temporal occlusion task. Thirty skilled adolescent cricket batters were recruited for the study. A temporal occlusion paradigm was employed to allow participants to predict the swing and length of the delivery. A projected video was occluded at seven points during the delivery, with each subsequent point providing progressively more visual information. Skilled adolescent batters were not able to correctly anticipate the delivery without ball flight information. They required between 100 and 200 ms of ball flight to correctly perceive the delivery type above the level of chance. These findings have implications for the development of visual anticipation skills for children in striking sports.