Following Australian's lead of using Global Positioning System (GPS) to analyse the workload on players, the National Cricket Academy has started using the device on Indian players.

Yesterday, South Zone's Rahul Dravid, S Sreesanth and Dinesh Karthik played their Duleep Trophy game against Central with a GPS instrument strapped to their body.

"They used the GPS device today while batting and fielding. Paul Chapman, (the chief NCA strength and conditioning coach), will take the reading tomorrow and analyse the data," South Zone physio Vinod Jain told MiD DAY yesterday. The GPS device, around the size of a small cellphone, is strapped to the players' back during the game and provides the exact data of their workload.

It's all about data
"The aim is to get data over all the facets of the game. It is used to analyse the workload on the fast bowlers, batsmen and fielders. Like the distances and speeds of movement, the number of squats etc of the wicketkeepers. The distance covered by a batsman while running between the wickets and the distance of a fast bowler during his spells at different times," said Jain.

Australia were the first to experiment with it. Sports scientist Aaron Kellet, who is assigned to work fulltime on how best to make use of GPS in cricket at Cricket Australia's Centre of Excellence, Brisbane, told MiD DAY during an interview last year: "GPS will help us understand the demands of the game better and to determine the ideal preparation and recovery period. This will help us cut down injury rates." Kellet said the impact of its use will be maximum in Twenty20.

"The data collected from Twenty20 shows a workload of almost 70 to 80% of that in an ODI, condensed into a three and half hour game. It is high intensity, the guys are constantly moving and covering a lot of distance in a short period of time."