I recently entered a charity bid to win a day at Lords with sporting legend Angus Fraser. Unlike my sons, I’m not particularly up on cricket so I couldn’t tell you a great deal about the match as such, but the thing that bowled me over (pardon the dire pun) was how incredibly tech-savvy the sporting world is. For a sport and venue steeped in history it struck me as extraordinary that the teams playing were relying heavily on technology to shape their strategy.
Live feeds of the bowls and runs were being fed to three laptops which were being scrutinised by the team’s manager and coaches. Plays were being analysed from varying angles and the details fed back to the players to ensue they knew what style and speeds to expect from each bowler and the angles and power from the batsmen.
I found out later that this is pretty standard stuff on the cricket scene and there is a country-wide server which all of this data is uploaded to for every team to view.
But as with all situations, the data is only useful if you know what to do with it. Middlesex did, and won.