Historic first at Champions Trophy: Indian trio to use chip-installed bats

London, May 30: When India's Rohit Sharma walks out to bat against Pakistan in the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 on Sunday (June 4), keep a close watch on his willow for it will not be that normal piece of cricket equipment. A chipset will be installed in Rohit's bat handle in what will be first-ever use of technology during a tournament.

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Champions Trophy, which gets under way in England on June 1 (Thursday), will be a historic event for the use of technology thanks to Intel.

Dubbed as a "smart" Champions Trophy, selected batsmen from the 8 participating teams will use chips in their bat handles. These chips will help analyse the batsmen's game during the global 50-over tournament.

Apart from Rohit, Ajinkya Rahane and Ravichandran Ashwin are the other two designated Indian players to use the chip-installed bats, according to reports on Tuesday (May 30).

In April this year, the International Cricket Council (ICC) named Intel as its Innovation Partner for the Champions Trophy.

"The new bat sensor powered by the Intel Curie technology that can be mounted on any cricket bat to generate data for every stroke that the batsman plays. With this technology, parameters like back-lift, bat speed and follow-through can be tracked for every cricket stroke. Several batsmen will use these bat sensors in the games at the 2017 Champions Trophy, enabling new insights on stroke play and rich story-telling in broadcast. Analytics from the sensor will be available for fans to analyse," ICC said today.

Speculur Managing Director Atul Srivastava added, "Speculur BatSense with Intel Inside has the potential to transform cricket across a varied audience from coaches to aspiring self-taught cricketers." "Coaches can use their insights and expertise along with the bat sensor data to make specific adjustments to a batsman's technique ultimately helping him perform better," Srivastava added.

Speculur also announced plans to bring this technology to consumers later in the year. With Speculur BatSense, hundreds of thousands of young and aspiring cricketers will soon be able to measure, track and improve their batting skills. Speculur plans to make Speculur BatSense with Intel Inside available in Australia, India, the United States and the UK in the second half of 2017.

ICC Chief Executive David Richardson had said, "This is an exciting announcement for the ICC as we continue to focus on innovation and technology to enhance both the game and the experience of the fan. The innovations we're working with Intel on for the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 are like nothing we've seen in the sport before and I'm delighted to welcome them to the ICC family."

"As the official Innovation Partner of the ICC Champions Trophy, we are excited to integrate Intel technology in this tournament", said James Carwana, general manager of the Intel Sports Group.

"We will be deploying a range of technology at the event as part of the our ongoing effort to bring a new level of data analytics to sports and to revolutionize how athletes train, coaches teach, scouts evaluate talent, and fans enjoy sports."

OneIndia News