Defining cricket batting expertise from the perspective of elite coaches

Traditionally in sporting tasks, expertise has been thought of as the attainment of near flawless technical abilities. While contemporary views have become more holistic in nature, in certain sporting domains it is still not clear what exactly encapsulates expertise. This study sought to further understand the crucial and defining characteristics of cricket batting; a complex and difficult perceptual-motor skill with minimal error tolerance and severe time constraints. Eight elite cricket batting coaches, who themselves were former international or state level batsmen, were interviewed to identify characteristics of cricket batting expertise. From this, a conceptual model was developed in relation to an expert within their performance environment. This model highlights several key factors experts possess beyond just technical proficiency, such as self-awareness of their technical and tactical strengths in relation to the situation of the game; self-regulatory behaviours to problem solve performance challenges in-game; and psychological strategies such as between-ball routines to manage cognitions and emotions. The conceptual model of batting expertise described in this paper is designed to introduce an order to how these various skills, possessed by an expert batter, interact within the performance environment to interpret expert performance.