Global Position Systems (GPS) are becoming very popular in sports to track the distances the players cover over a game or during training session. Cricket is now no exception...

Over the 2010 season in a combined project between Yorkshire County Cricket and the GPS system Sensorize, the Strength and Conditioning team have tracked the match demands of a number of your favourite Yorkshire players.

You may be surprised to learn that over the fielding innings of a T20 game, a Yorkshire player covers more distance than an average Rugby League or Rugby Union player in a whole game!

Here at Yorkshire, during the explosive T20 clashes, some of the players were covering up to 10k in just over an hour of fielding. When you consider how often the outfielders chase a ball edged to the boundary, or the times the infielders work to stop a quick single, you can see how hard the players are working.  When you combine this with the distances the players have to rapidly cover when changing the field, it is easy to see how the mileage can mount up.

Our players are not just walking around either, as the average fielder completes 20 x 20m sprints over the course of fielding 20 overs, alongside lots of turns and accelerations – no mean feat!  These numbers are similar to Football, with an average of 19 sprints a game, and Rugby League with an average of 17.

These numbers prove that the image of Cricket being a game populated by unfit players is a thing of the past.  Nowadays the game is fast and intense, comparable to other team sports and requiring the Cricketers to be as fit as their counterparts. 

We are working hard on collecting data during the CB40 and LV= County Championship, so look out for the red waistbands on a pitch near you.