Abstract
Vision plays a crucial role in sport as it is the primary source of external information and
provides 85 – 90% of the sensory input during athletic performance (Vickers, 2007; Kluka &
Knudson, 1997). The study aimed to investigate the effect of sports vision training on the batting
performance and predictive judgement on high school cricket players. The sample included male,
high school level cricketers ranging in ages 13 – 18 (14.8 ± 1.2) with at least two years playing
experience in cricket. Three high schools were invited to participate in the study. The
participants were non-randomly assigned to two groups, 15 participants to a sports vision
training group (n=15) and 15 participants to a regular practice group (n=15). Each group was
assessed according to the tasks of visual skills, fitness, batting performance, predictive
judgement and fitness. The visual skills testing included eye hand coordination, central
peripheral awareness and visual response. The fitness assessment was a multistage fitness test.
The batting performance test assessed the quality of interception and the predictive judgment
assessed the ability to judge the length bowled. The results showed that the intervention group
showed significant improvement within the visual skills, batting performance and judgment test
conducted (p< 0.05), however, these improvements were not statistically different to the control
group (p> 0.05). Although there were improvements in certain parameters tested, a larger sample
may produce better results.