Movement Demands of an Elite Cricket Team During the Big Bash League in Australia

There is a lack of research on the movement patterns within Twenty20 (T20) cricket, thus the purpose of this study was to investigate the movement demands placed on elite T20 cricket players playing in The Big Bash League, in Australia, in the 2017/2018 season. Player positional movements were determined from the time motion data obtained from a portable 10 Hz global positioning (GPS) unit. Overall, all the players covered between 1.77km and 6.54km in a time ranging between 40.4 minutes and 96.5 minutes. Fast bowlers covered a mean distance of 6.5 (±0.5) km, batsmen 1.7 (±1.2) km and fielders 5.9 (±0.9) km. This is the first study that has looked at the movement demands of players in The Big Bash League and found that bowlers have the highest movement demands followed by fielding. With that, arguably, more attention needs to be devoted to bowling and particularly fielding which is often not prioritized. However, overall demands of T20 cricketers have decreased. Cricketers and coaches need to ensure that they adapt training to ensure that their players are physically prepared for the associated demands.