 Test level batsmen have to be incredibly skillful. Fast bowlers can bowl over 150 kilometers an hour. Batsmen will have less than half a second once the ball leaves the bowlers hand to make contact with the ball. In this split second they have to pick the line and length of the ball whether it is swinging or going to move off the scene and then decide which shot to play or not play. And as a batsman there are not too many second chances. If you miss the chances are pretty high that the bowler will hit either you, if you're lucky, or the wickets. So it is key that batsmen make good decisions and make them quickly. We asked Jonathan Connor, a specialist in skills acquisition with Cricket Australia to help explain some of the techniques and strategies batsmen use and why they make certain decisions. Batters primary purpose is always to score runs or look to score runs while limiting the chances of a dismissal. This can be done by playing conservatively quite early on in the innings looking to adapt and attune to the different types of conditions and oppositions that they're faced with. Once they're better attuned and are able to understand the pitch surfaces and the layout of the game, often they start to play more expansively and perhaps look to score at a faster run rate. There we go, another loose ball from England and Perry's punished it. There's a theory that essentially as you're coming out to perform it's all about your education of intention. So you come out to bat and it's a case of, okay, what am I looking to do today? If I'm an opening batter on a GABA green seeming wicket it's probably leave everything outside off some and only play what I need to play until that ball gets a little bit older and the pitch gets a little bit harder. If you can whack it back into the turf here, the GABA races away for four. Education of attention is probably more around becoming better attuned to the opposition, the conditions, those types of things and then the calibration is all about adapting your movements to the conditions of the pitch and the opposition bowl themselves. But the specific goals of each batsman and how they approach the game will depend on their position in the batting lineup and the current situation of the match. So often batters have different roles within the game. Opening batsmen, depending on what their strength is can be there to nullify the swinging ball early on or perhaps they could be there to take it full advantage of a hard ball that allows them to score quickly. He's there, let's just step short. That's close! It'd be fair to say the opening batsmen often face the most difficult conditions. Bowls are fresh, the ball is new and they've got the greatest demands on their ability. However, their role is often different to what you'd expect of a number three or a number four. And Richards has just catched that with all the authority we've seen from him this season. We often talk about a number three and a number four are the best batsmen. However, that might be due to the fact that they do have to be the most adaptable and be able to fill that opening role. Likewise, if they come in a little bit later when the batting team is in a more dominant position they might have to quickly get on with it and be more aggressive early on in their innings. Cricket is all about constantly adapting to the opponent, to the pitch and the ball and this is especially important for batsmen. We conducted some research on cricket batting expertise performance and what it is that separates them from less skilled players. So we interviewed a group of international or state level coaches who themselves used to be international or state level batters and one thing they would talk about is their ability to attune to information within the environment. Understand the conditions, the opposition bowler and ultimately their role in the game. So the Western Leeds are really struggling. There's been no better shot played today even by Vivian Richards than that. Ultimately, expert performance is all about adaption. The best players, the experts that do it are often seen to be executing their natural game when constantly they're in a state of problem solving. The most difficult situation for a batsman is when they first go out to bat. Facing bowlers and conditions they're not used to can be tricky and against fast bowlers, batsmen just don't have the time to assess what the ball is doing and go through options on how to play it. So many will go in with a mindset of playing particular shots against particular deliveries and will wait patiently for the right ball to score off. Cricket batting in general is incredibly difficult in terms of the time demands that fast bowlers often put on batters. Fast bowlers in Australia often bowl anywhere between 140 to 150 kilometres an hour. Often what batters might try to do is employ a particular game plan where they're looking for a particular type of delivery to be bowled to play a shot. And every other type of ball, whether it's good length just outside off or a ball going down leg, you'll have a particular shot that you're looking to employ. As batsmen become more accustomed to the pitch surface and the opposition, they might look to expand their game and start to play different shots to different length deliveries. Did she get it over the top of Eccleston? She does. That is a sign if ever I saw one. It's all about managing risk versus your reward and understanding what type of shots you can perform today at different periods of the game. So whether it's dotting up a ball until it becomes older and stops swinging and allows you to play your more expensive game perhaps. To do this ball after ball takes an amazing amount of concentration and it can be mentally exhausting. So batsmen need to be able to switch off and then switch back on quickly. And that's it. Touchdown. Touch is 100. As the bowler is running in to deliver the ball, the batters are often employing a bit of a pre-ball routine where they might touch their pads or tap their bat a certain amount of times so they can clear their mind and have a direct focus of attention on the upcoming delivery. During this period as the bowler is running in, it's quite strenuous and cognitively demanding to focus all of your attention on what's coming up next. In between balls, as the bowler is walking back to his mark, often batters employ a between ball routine that allows them to immediately reflect on the ball that just happened and what it means for the context of the game. Then they'll often relax and think about task-relevant thoughts. Perhaps do some gardening, look into the field and then finally they'll have like a refocus period where they might basically start a bit of a pre-ball routine, stepping on to the crease, adjusting their pads, their gloves and getting ready for the next delivery. One of the things that really surprised us was the consistency in their between ball routine. While some people might call it superstitious, it was very much a consistent habit that allowed them to refocus their efforts onto the task at hand. And when the bowler is coming in, batsmen do not just focus on the ball. They take in a surprising amount of information even before the ball is bowled. Left, very well left and the crash helmet falls off his head. So a lot about us talk about sort of different cues that help them to anticipate the line of length of the ball. Subconsciously, we sort of think that the point of release is a really informative area. However, far more interesting stories are the ones where bats talk about the bowler at the start of their run-up might stick their tongue out or smile and they know that what's coming is going to be a short ball or an in-swinger. Likewise, other research has looked at the anticipating, the kinematic cues of the opposition by using video screen and asking the batsers what the line of length of the ball might be because they've occluded the video just before the ball is released. While they look at the ball, we often see that they draw information from kinematic movements of the bowler because when we get rid of them, we see that their anticipation drops. This has highlighted some pretty incredible information about how batters are able to pick up advanced visual information from a bowler's action. Test level batsmen develop and refine these techniques and strategies over many years. It is not about talent, but about hours and hours of practice and determination. So a really interesting thing about expertise in a lot of different sports is that expertise isn't derived from any particular, let's say, hardware advantages, so they don't necessarily have better reflexes or better eyesight. It's literally about their motivation, dedication and adaption to basically the opposition and game itself. Experts are certainly not born, but something that's developed through hours and years of practice and specifically practice that allows them to be able to track a moving ball and couple their movements with both the trajectory and the context of the game. So net practice is probably one of the most common sort of practice methods employed by coaches and players to develop their skill, while it offers some advantages logistically, allowing great amount of volume, less players need to be involved. It does have some drawbacks which are probably better suited towards more centre wicket practice. So developing the cognitive aspect, being able to deal with pressure and anxiety that might come about after hitting three great shots to a fielder isn't the type of anxiety that might be induced within the nets. What you probably get more so out of centre wicket practice is holistic development to cricket batting. So not just the technical aspect, but also the cognitive emotions that are involved with the game.