Physics in Cricket

Cricket is not a game that most Americans know about, however, it is a popular sport in Australia and in other British parts of the world. This sport is not unlike any other sport in the area that it involves a great deal of physics. However, this paper will focus on the aspect of bowling the ball and the batters reaction to this. When comparing Cricket to other sports that most Americans know, the closest match that can be found is baseball. For example, a ball is thrown toward someone with a bat, and the person with the bat attempts to hit the ball outside of a set boundary. Also, the scoring system is cricket is based upon runs. Sounds very similar to baseball, right? Well, it is much like baseball, but the terminology used is different. For example, in baseball, the person who throws the ball is called a pitcher, but in cricket, this person is called a bowler. In contrast, the person who hits the ball with a bat is called a batter, however, a bat in cricket is much different than a bat in baseball. In baseball the bat is round, but in cricket the bat is shaped like a long paddle, meaning it is flat on two sides. First comes the batter when preparing for a game. A controversy that arises in both cricket and baseball alike is the question of “what size bat should be used?” The answer to this question is, whatever size allows you to put the most possible velocity while making the ball soar off at around a 45-degree angle. This depends on what bat a person is comfortable with. For example, a person might be able to swing a light bat at 45m/s but a heavier bat at 38m/s, therefore in theory the lighter bat would take a ball further because it has more velocity to transfer to the ball, right? Not quite, a heavier bat packs much more momentum and energy, so the force from that would make the ball go further, so the trick is actually swinging the heaviest bat that feels comfortable to swing, because when trying to hit the ball out of the field, this

Citations: " MATHS AND PHYSICS OF CRICKET, ESPECIALLY SWING BOWLING ". 10 Sep 2008. <http://www.msstate.edu/org/mcc/newsinfo/physicsofbowling.pdf.> Cross, Rod . "The Physics of Cricket." The Physics of Cricket. 10 Sep 2008. <http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~cross/cricket.html> "Cricket." Cricket – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 10 Sep 2008 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket >.