Cognitive, Cardiovascular and Muscular Stress Imposed by a Twenty20 Batting Simulation

Abstract

In the sport of cricket, batting requires prolonged cognitive control accompanied with high muscular and cardiovascular stress. However, the acuity of information processing (cognition) during bouts of physical activity is not fully studied. This investigation is the first to investigate the influence of striking rare in Twenty20 cricket on the physiology of the batter. Phase 1 a retrospective analysis of competitive individual innings in Twenty20 matches between 2006–2019. Per-delivery probabilities of run type and on/o↵-strike demarca- tion were calculated for two innings subsets. Both simulations replicate a 1-hour and 2-minute partnership of 93 deliveries, 51 of which are ‘on-strike’. The low strike rate innings replicates scoring 61 runs, compared to 88 runs in the high strike rate innings. Phase 2, a randomised, repeated measures laboratory design, recruited 14 skilled batters (competitive playing experience > 6 years) to perform both simulations. The physical (heart rate, muscular output, blood lactate accumulation, fluid loss) and cogni- tive (working memory, executive functioning, prefrontal cortex haemodynamics) strain of Twenty20 batting was quantified. High strike rate batting was found to augment responses of heart rate (p < 0.01), and produce slower sprint performance (p < 0.01). However, changes to lower-limb peak power output (p = 0.08), fluid loss (p = 0.71) and accumulation of blood lactate (p = 0.67) were comparable. Working memory response times improved with moderate e↵ects (d = 0.61) in the low strike rate simulation. Compared to large e↵ects following the high strike rate simulation (d = 1.20) where ex- ecutive functioning was moderately more error-prone (r = 0.60). The prefrontal cortex displays substantially less reserve to increase concentrations of oxygenated haemoglobin when confronted with cognitively demanding tasks following either simulation. In Phase 3, a novel device (Pitch Reaction Test - PRT) is developed to ecologically quantify response times of implicit and explicit information processing. The record- ing accuracy of the PRT was assessed using a high-speed camera. Overall, a strong relationship is observed between video footage and PRT responses ( = 0.99 0.97). Neither subject height ( = 0.01, p = 0.54) or true leg length ( = 0.00, p = 0.58) were significant predictors of PRT performance. Future studies should continue to elucidate how batting modulates information processing eciency.