Technology is impacting all aspects of our life, and our national pastime — cricket — is no different.
Mumbai Indians has developed an app that lets players search for old videos of any batsman facing any bowler. This was revealed by Indian cricketer Ramandeep Singh, who was playing with Mumbai Indians in the 2022 edition of the IPL. Singh says that this app lets players search for any domestic or international player in the world.
“Mumbai Indians plans very well,” Ramandeep Singh said on the Raj Shamani podcast. “They have plans against all opposition players. They have their own app named Sports Always. It has data on all domestic and international players everywhere in the world. You can look up any batsman, and then look up any bowler, and the app gives you videos of that batsman facing that particular bowler,” he says.
“So if I enter the batsman as Ramandeep Singh, and I enter the bowler as Jasprit Bumrah, I get videos of me facing Bumrah over the years,” he explains.
Such an app could come in especially handy during the IPL. The IPL gets together players from different countries and leagues. Many players have never seen many opposition players, let alone having played with them. The Sports Always app could help MI players get valuable intelligence about their opposition and rivals, and to come up with strategies. The app could also be invaluable during scouting and finding new talent.
Ramandeep Singh also talked about the trackers that players now wear in specialized vests. “There’s also a GPS that we insert in a sports vest. And we have a tracker on our jerseys. This system notes the speed at which we’re running, and tracks it,” he says.
“This is particularly helpful for bowlers because when they’re fatigued, the speed during the run-up fluctuates. So this gives insights into when a bowler is fatigued and which bowler is fatigued,” he says. “The technical teams have a software on their laptops which gives them this data in real time for each player. These players can be given rests accordingly. This data is then used for workload management,” he said. Singh said that the GPS data allowed management to decide which players to rest between games to prevent injuries.
It’s understandable that the IPL is using technology to improve the performance of its players. It’s now the second most valuable sports league in the world ahead of the EPL and the NBA, and the stakes are high. Players receive millions of dollars to play for just months in a year, and any sort of assistance that they can get them to improve their performance even a tiny bit could be invaluable. And with Mumbai Indians being the joint most successful team in the league over its 17-year-history, it appears that these technical innovations are working.