How Bengaluru's cricket coaches use technology to help emerging talents

By: ​J Vignesh

BENGALURU: Danish Altaf, a 13-year-old left-hand batsman, had a technical flaw. He played the ball early and got out cheaply .It was only after his coach at the Karnataka Institute of Cricket showed him a video that he understood where his mistake lay.

Bengaluru, the country's tech capital, has always had a great cricketing culture. Of late, technology has taken centre stage even in the coaching of this game. Danish is just one of the many cricketers in the city who are reaping its benefits.

"There is this whole tech-savvy culture in the city . Sport is growing and the best technological minds are here. They want to put their brains into organising this sector," said RX Murali, MD and director of coaching of RX Cricket Academy , whose students include Ranji player CM Gautam.

Data like scores, percentages and wagon wheels have become important in the present scenario as they aid in planning and preparation. "Data do not tell lies. Data analytics in sports is the in thing now. The coach's decision earlier was based on intuition. Now they have software, algorithms and hard data to back it up," said Sujith Somasunder, former Indian cricketer, who with star pacer Venkatesh Prasad, runs a cricket coaching camp at Indiranagar.

If stats are one part of the story , video analysis is another boon to the coaches. Free video analysis software like Kinovea and Video4Coach are used for slowmotion capture, motion analysis, twin window comparisons and to draw lines and angles on screen and to analyse batting and bowling techniques. "Pictures speak a thousand words. Even small errors can be rectified by using video analysis," said Vijay Madyalkar, mentor, Just Cricket academy. (Retd) Wing Commander Arijit Ghosh, chief operating officer at the Jain Academy of Sporting Excellence, agreed. "Grassroots is the best place to correct because incorrect muscle memory is hard to change later in the career".

Coaching has become more indepth and tougher as the new generation is technology-smart."The job of a coach has become harder as the kids these days are smart and ask a lot of questions.The coach has to do double the preparation to be of help," said Taha Farooqui, coach at KIOC.KIOC's star pupils include Robin Uthappa and Manish Pandey.