Physiological responses of batsmen during a simulated One Day International century

Background: There is a limited amount of literature on thephysiological cost of batting. Of the studies that have beencompleted, most have used protocols that are of short durationand high intensity, and it has been questioned whether thisrepresents actual game play. Furthermore, it is difficult to studysports such as cricket due to the intermittent nature of the game.Objective: To determine the physiological responses of batsmenduring a simulated One Day International century.Methods: Seventeen male batsmen from the Rhodes UniversityCricket Club performed a simulated batting work bout knownas the BATEX© protocol. The protocol consisted of six, five oversstages, each lasting 21 minutes. Three of the stages (stages one,three and five) were low-intensity stages and the other three(stages two, four and six) were high-intensity stages. During thework bout selected physiological responses were recorded..Results: Heart rate (124±15-159±14 beats.min-1), oxygen uptake(29.3±6.1-43.4±6.3 ml.kg-1.min-1), energy expenditure (48.1±9.2-109.2±10.5 kJ.min-1) and core temperature (37.7±0.3-38.7±0.4 oC)responses all increased significantly (p<0.05) between stageone and stage six. The respiratory exchange ratio decreasedsignificantly (p<0.05) between stages one and six (0.90±0.19-0.89±0.37).Conclusions: Batting is more physically demanding thanoriginally thought, and as a result training programmes shouldconcentrate on simulating real match play situations to improveperformance and reduce the risk of injury.