Professional cricketers probably don’t come to mind when one thinks of sports that produce the best natural athletes. But the days of David Boon and Shane Warne are gone, and today’s cricketers are expected to perform at elite levels.
This is particularly true of Australia’s best and brightest. In 2016, Australian captain Steve Smith played 45 games of international cricket, including 11 Tests, that ran for a total of 50 days. Smith, who is the clear number one batsman in the world, according to the ICC Test cricket batting rankings, spent 44 hours at the batting crease and faced 1,837 deliveries from opposition bowlers.
Smith would have spent multiples of that amount of time in the field, in hostile conditions in Sri Lanka as well as the high temperatures of an Australian summer. He missed last year’s Indian Premier League due to injury which would have added an extra eight weeks to an already hectic year.
Add to that again the time taken to prepare, train, plan (he is the captain of the team after all) and recover, and is it any wonder that Steve Smith is one of Australia’s highest paid athletes?
While Smith is one of the busiest cricketers in Australia, the lot of a professional Test cricketer of more middling talents in 2017 is intense. The days of David Boon famously (or infamously, depending on your point of view) sinking 52 tinnies on a flight to England or Shane Warne puffing on a cigarette on the Lord’s balcony during play are long gone.
(AFP Photo/Greg Wood)
Today’s cricketers are genuine athletes.
As we discussed last when reviewing the profile of an Australian rules footballer, a cricketer’s most unique athletic attribute is the endurance required to play at the highest level. Test cricketers spend not only hours but days on their feet plying their trade in a given match, and over a season that time extends into weeks.
However, the most common state of performance is not particularly active. The concept of time on legs is important, but as elite rugby league coach, Rohan Smith, pointed out when we discussed the athleticism of cricketers, the most significant element of endurance is “concentration, decision making and skill execution.”
It’s why Australian rules came out on top in this assessment.
But this is an important attribute to keep in mind while discussing a cricketer’s most significant point of difference. Cricket is a power game, when we define power as how explosive a player is required to be over and above a resting state.
“Almost every activity in cricket is power based,” said Rohan.
“Think about it; sprinting to field, diving to stop a ball on the boundary, leaping for a sharp catch, running between the wickets, shot-making, bowling, throwing. The list goes on.”
Rohan’s not wrong. Mitchell Johnson, Australia’s formerly fearsome fast bowler and ICC cricketer of the year, wore a GPS tracker on the first day of the Boxing Day Test in 2013. The data revealed that, while he travelled 23 kilometres over the 6.5 hours of play, he completed 144 sprints – 127 of those would have been the balls delivered by Johnson as a bowler, and the remainder as a fielder.
Johnson’s sprinting efforts are quite extraordinary. The maximum speed he was clocked at was 33.1 kilometres per hour, reached as he was fielding a ball on the MCG boundary rope. For context, Usain Bolt’s average speed during his world record-breaking 100-metre sprint was 36.7 kilometres per hour.
It’s a similar story for batsmen, who are capable of striking a ball over 80 metres in the air with half a second to react from the point of delivery.
(AFP/Theo Karanikos)
According to an academic study in the Nature Neuroscience journal, a batsman has to judge the timing of a shot to within three milliseconds (three one-thousandths of a second) to hit it optimally. It makes the consistent striking of David Warner seem even more superhuman.
A lot of what happens on a cricket field is about timing and concentration. But a heap is centred on an ability to go from zero to 100 with limited time to prepare or react.
However, the football codes are superior across the other facets of athletic performance. Cricketers are required to be agile, but this typically centres on specific acts in the field rather than the ‘always on’ agility of 360-degree sports like Australian rules and soccer.
And while plenty is made of the time Australia’s best cricketers spend in the gym, I’d hazard a guess 140-kilogram Waratah and Wallaby lock Will Skelton would dominate the entire Australian XI in consecutive arm wrestling duels.
“A cricketer would have several sessions in the gym in a typical week versus 5-6 sessions for a rugby union player,” said Rohan. “Union players focus on building strength and muscle mass, while cricketers are mostly concerned with stability, balance and power.”
Key Information
Ryan and Rohan are making these judgments based on the highest level of domestic competition in each of the sports – except for cricket, where the Australian Test team seems like the more appropriate comparator.
In this series, each sport will be ranked on key categories. We’ll reveal the final scores and the top sport at the end of the series.
Endurance: the length of time an athlete is required to perform at their peak, in a game and over the course of a season.
Power: how explosive an athlete needs to be, in both speed and strength terms, over and above the “resting” state of play.
Agility: a measure of an athlete’s required evasiveness, ability to change direction and be aware of those around them.
Speed: how fast is a player required to move around the field, both in sprints and general play.
Stay tuned for the next instalment when we’ll discuss rugby league.
The full series
» Part One: AFL
» Part Two: Cricket
» Part Three: Rugby league
» Part Four: Rugby union
» Part Five: Football
» Part Six: Final Results
This series is sponsored by by POWERADE, fuelling rivalry through the POWERADE POWERSCORE. The Powerade Powerscore, developed in conjunction with the New South Wales Institute of Sport, allows you to compare yourself to mates and elite athletes.
Bobbo7
Guest
Cricket's greatest test is the mental aspect. There is no hiding from poor form in cricket and the time between balls gives the players time to think, which means pressure plays a bigger part then in most sports.
josh
Roar Rookie
Levers for arms
Evan Askew
Guest
Doug Walters first set the record for the flight to England in 1977. I think it was 44 cans. Rod marsh beat him by one sinking the last beer as the plane was taxing in on the runaway for the 83 world cup. Noon as it turns out smorgasbord of them. And the 1970s cricket team could give kiss, stones and gnr a run for their money when it comes to alcohol abuse is not in drug abuse.
BurgyGreen
Guest
A big unit, as James Brayshaw would say
GJ
Guest
I'm surprised that you don't publish each of these articles under all the respective sports pages?
spruce moose
Guest
Or Jonty Rhodes, who turned down a chance to go to the 1996 Olympics for Hockey. Or Punter who was allegedly told to give up cricket to become a professional golfer.
Sideline
Guest
Boon's 52 has him covered. But as the article notes, it's a different sport these days.
Rellum
Roar Guru
Any one who knows anything about sport should know that Ballet dancers are elite athletes. Same goes with Gymnasts. Different skill sets of course, I can see Ballet dancers have speed of power, but like you say, the other categories they are right up there with anyone.
Rellum
Roar Guru
I can't see people being able to specialize in a skill that won't be use if T20 takes over from both test and ODI cricket. If Test cricket does survive as a professional version then the other thing to consider is that international players play very little FC cricket so they get little opportunity to get game experience at close catching like they used to. Right now only Smith and maybe Renshaw are good enough at it to be in the slips cordon, and they are not as good as the guys who came before. It is a skill that is dying out. Matty Rehnshaw is a breath of fresh air in the way he goes about his game as he is a specialist slipper. Look at Gully, that was a specialist position that was required regularly that is not used much if at all anymore. And that was a spectacular place to field. Disagree that one day cricket is the most athletic format, unless you are arguing that the condensed nature of the running. FC is the most exhausting, it just takes so much to keep going for that long period, and the bowlers are required to do much more work in a 50 over period in FC cricket as there are no rules on over limits. Yes there are more dot balls but for bowlers and keepers that doesn't change much, less running up to the stumps for the keepers. As for spending days in the shed watching people bat, guys/girls do actually spend that time batting and they are in a way recovering from bowling for a whole day previously. Then they are generally back out there the next day which is much less recovery time than a one day series when you get 3-4 day break between games.
bozo
Guest
This is a joke article right? Show them the way to the money and they are they will be faster there than Usain.
Pope Paul VII
Guest
Actually Maxi is an outstanding athlete. Ricky Ponting was excellent.
Doctor Rotcod
Guest
Unfortunately,none of the sportsmen mentioned over these five sports would keep up with male classical ballet dancers who practice four to six hours a day to make what they do seem effortless because it is effortless and without overbuilding.(Mind you they have problems with They have lower aerobic needs than other athletes because of their intense training,have greater vertical leaps stronger hips and greater endurance.They tire more slowly,are stronger kilo for kilo than rugby players A typical elite male ballet dancer would practice ballet technique for an hour and a quarter and rehearse for six hours a day then perform for two hours six nights a week at the highest,mistake-free level Just a quote from Pittsburgh Steelers 145 kg nose tackle Steve McLendon "Ballet is harder than anything else I do" And they're more artistic than cricketers
BrainsTrust
Guest
Wicketkeeping would be tiring, and get the body very sore but would it rely on fitness. The effort is spread out whereas a fast bowler concentrates their effort over a spell. If close in catching dies off as a skill, then that opens the way for those who concentrate on it to get selected ahead of others in test cricket. T20 I think because the ball it being hit all round the place instead of stealing short singles around point and mid wicket the value of a top fielder is less. Taylor lacked in scoring rate and hitting ability. If one day dies off and test cricket and T20 remains then the big hitters of old who matched their power with a big waistline could make a comeback.Certainly one day cricket is the most athletic format.
Mango Jack
Guest
43 according to legend.
Mango Jack
Guest
It's similar in rugby these days. They can all bench press a house and smash beep tests but struggle to catch and pass.
Johnno
Guest
Warney's ST Kilda coach said this about him. "He wasn’t gifted athletically in a speed and agility sense. He had enough football skill and I think that followed through into the way he bowled."
Johnno
Guest
Shane Warne may of been fat but he played a high level of footy, I think he played u-19''s for ST Kilda and also played a few games in the reserves in the 1980's.. So to keep it simple Warnie was definitely a SANFL standard footy player. AFL has become much more aerobic in the 2000's,and less strength based.
AGordon
Guest
Can the author explain how they factor in "down time" in a game? In Aussie Rules, players sub off regularly, as do League Players. Union players often only play little more than half a game, because they can sub so many players and in cricket, if you're on the batting side and not batting, you might be doing a Warnie at Lords! If this down time is taken OUT of the equation, surely Test cricket has the need for the greatest endurance and concentration. In an ideal world, both sides field/bowl for 2.5 days and the concentration is intense. Bear in mind the conditions these guys often play in, ie high temperatures, high humidity, etc, and no other sport comes close. The other codes are certainly more explosive but I reckon cricket is deceptively difficult to play at the higher levels.
Rellum
Roar Guru
I would suggest keepers work much harder than fast bowlers. They are doing a power squat every ball then running up and down to the wicket if the fielders are pinning it into the stumps. Fast bowlers of course work hard and put loads of stress on their bodies. Tubby Taylor was also not exactly an athletic specimen but he was one of Australia's greats fieldsmen as he was a gun slipper. One of the best ever, That is a skill that is being lost to the game with T20 cricket and power hitting, flat pitches and rules to reduce the "strike zone" changing field settings to be more about stopping boundaries than anything else. If T20 does become the dominate form of the game close catches will disappear and that extreme athleticism require to catch in those areas will go. There will be more emphasis on players like Warner who are fast over the ground to cover more outfield areas.
Bakkies
Guest
I say someone like Morné Morkel who played Rugby to a high standard as a junior no doubt as a lock where he would have been jumping in the line out, shifting 100 plus kg bodies in rucks, running and scrummaging. Probably played a bit of Basketball too.