Smart Cricket Ball
The Centre for Design Innovation’s Smart Products Engineering team developed a world-first Smart Cricket Ball, creating a new way to profile and coach bowlers.
Led by Professor Franz Konstantin ‘Tino’ Fuss, this project is seeing the development of the first ever Smart Cricket Ball in the world featuring complex parameters to measure bowling performance.
It was tested in collaboration with the University of Sydney, L’boro University and the England Cricket Team; and by means of the Smart Baseball version with Chonnam National University, Sports2i, and the Gwangju Jinheung Baseball School.
Since 2011, other smart cricket and baseballs were developed to only measure release speed and spin.
In contrast, the Centre for Design Innovation (CDI)’s Smart Cricket Ball measures 5 physical performance parameters:
- spin rate
- angular acceleration
- total torque
- spin torque
- power.
As well as 5 skill parameters:
- precession
- normalised precession
- precession torque
- efficiency
- frequency.
In addition, our Smart Cricket Ball has many other features and capabilities:
- It calculates the centre of pressure (the point where the maximum torque is imparted onto the ball)
- It records data at 815 Hz, transfers data wirelessly and is charged inductively. The electronics is miniaturised with a diameter of 30mm
- It detects the delivery bowled (fast bowling and 20+ different spin bowling deliveries).
The Smart Cricket Ball directly contributes to the success of training intervention studies, as evidenced by the improvement of performance in several spin bowlers.
Project timeframe
November 2011 - continuing
Research team
- Professor Franz Konstantin ‘Tino’ Fuss, Program Director
- Batdelger Doljin, PhD student
- Daniel Kwangyul Jeong, PhD student
- Dr Rene Ferdinands, University of Sydney.
Smart Cricket Ball
This video is from the Smart Products Engineering program at the Centre for Design Innovation and discusses the development of the Smart Cricket Ball.
Doljin B, Fuss FK 2015: Development of a smart cricket ball for advanced performance analysis of bowling. Procedia Technology, 20: 133–137.
Fuss FK, Doljin B, Ferdinands Red 2016: Case Studies of the Centre of Pressure Between Hand and Ball in Off-spin Bowling, Analysed with a Smart Cricket Ball. In: Jansen AJ (Ed), The Engineering of Sport XI (Procedia Engineering, 147:203-207), Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Fuss FK, Doljin B, Ferdinands Red, Beach A 2015: Dynamics of Spin Bowling: The Normalized Precession of the Spin axis Analysed with a Smart Cricket Ball. In: Subic A, Fuss FK, Alam F, Pang TY, Takla M (Eds) The Impact of Technology on Sport VI (Procedia Engineering 112: 196-201). Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Fuss FK, Lythgo N, Smith RM, Benson AC, Gordon B 2011: Identification of key performance parameters during off-spin bowling with a smart cricket ball. Sports Technology, 4(3–4): 159–163.
Fuss FK, B. Doljin, Red Ferdinands 2020: Bowling performance assessed with a smart cricket ball: a novel way of profiling bowlers. Proceedings 49(1):141.
Doljin B, Jeong K, Kim Y-K, Fuss FK 2020: Profiling of a pitcher's performance with a smart baseball: a case report. Proceedings 49(1):103.
Fuss FK, Doljin B, Ferdinands Red 2018: Effect of the Grip Angle on Off-Spin Bowling Performance Parameters, Analysed with a Smart Cricket Ball. Proceedings 2(6), 204.
Fuss FK, Doljin B, Ferdinands Red 2018: Effect on Bowling Performance Parameters When Intentionally Increasing the Spin Rate, Analysed with a Smart Cricket Ball. Proceedings 2(6), 226.
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