Influence of eye dominance on skill accuracy and proficiency in cricket catching and bowling

The ability to place the hands in the right position at the right time is very important to differentiate between a spectacular catch or an easy miss. The brain plays the most important role in achieving these spatial and temporal requirements with the help of the visuomotor pathway. Just as there is a dominant hand there is a dominant eye as well which sends more information to the brain than the non-dominant eye. The binocular vision focuses primarily on the velocity of the ball, different retinal images and quality which is more related to the spatial requirement. But it has been found before that, training the monocular vision can cause decreases in the spatial and temporal errors in the binocular vision.

The objective of the study

To investigate the influence of eye dominance on percentage of catches grasped, spatial error, temporal error and point of interception in cricket catching

To investigate the influence of eye dominance on the ability to bowl accurately in cricket bowling.

Eye Dominance Test (EDT)– EDT will be performed by performing the MILES EYE DOMINANCE TEST.

Catching Test(CT) - CT will be conducted in MARENA with the help of the BOLA bowling machine. The subject will be asked to stand 10 meters away from the bowling machine within a circle of diameter 30cm. The ball will be projected from the bowling machine to the right and left side of the hip at a speed of 35 miles per hour. All protective gear will be provided to minimize any injuries. A total of 60 catches will be assessed in 3 different eye conditions (Bi, Rt Mono. Lt Mono). The player will catch 20 balls in each eye condition with 10 ball projected to the right and 10 projected to the left. For occlusion an eye patch will be provided to the player

Bowling Test– BT will be done on a cricket pitch with proper international markings and international standards. An area will be marked by a rectangle with a radius of 1x3 ft in the full length area at the 4 meter mark. A familiarization of 1 over (2 Bi, 2 Rt Mono, 2 Lt Mono) after which a break of 10 minutes will be given before starting the test. In the test the bowlers will get 5 overs (30 balls) which will consist of 3 eye conditions (Bi, Rt Mono, Lt Mono). The player will bowl 10 balls in each eye condition. For occlusion an eye patch will be provided to the player.

One-way repeated ANOVA with further Dunnett Post Hoc Comparison if needed will be performed. Level of Significance will be set at a p value of <0.05