Competency Test in Cricket Defensive Drive using Double Pendulum Dynamics

The level of competency of playing cricket defensive drive was measured by using double pendulum model. Three defensive drives by three right-handed batters were recorded in the bat and wrist mounted inertial sensors. The sensor recorded acceleration profiles were tried to match with those obtained by modeling the drives with double pendulum dynamics imposing the initial conditions at start of each drives. In the analysis, the movement of the bat was modeled as the lower pendulum and the wrist as the upper pendulum of the double pendulum model. Phase portrait derivative method was used to analyze each drives in the pendulum dynamics to quantify the competency of the action for the drives. The method showed that the better competency of two batters (error 2.5% and 7.4%) compared to third one (error 13.9%) can easily be identified observing the statistical features (i. e. standard deviation of the bat velocity, ratio of major to minor axis of the phase portrait curve, null hypothesis between sensor data and data from the double pendulum model) extracted from the sensor and double pendulum model. Competency test can be a useful tool for cricket coaching environment; furthermore, incorporation of mathematics in cricket batting might add a new dimension in batting research.