Yorkshire County Cricket Club Fees Funded MRes in Collaboration with the Carnegie School of Sport, Leeds Beckett University

The Carnegie School of Sport in collaboration with Yorkshire County Cricket Club are looking to recruit a highly motivated individual to a prestigious fees funded MRes to investigate ‘The match demands of professional men’s county cricket.’ 

• Full-time Masters by Research
• Start date: 1st February 2023

This is a unique opportunity for an enthusiastic and high-achieving individual looking to undertake a fully funded MRes in a vibrant research and professional sporting environment, helping innovate and drive current and future practices with a high level of scientific rigour within professional cricket.

The MRes studentship will include UK tuition fees being covered. There is further budget to assist with expenses during the in-season period (April – September).

The match demands of professional men’s county cricket

Male county cricketers play and compete across three different formats, 4-day (Championship), 50-over (One-Day) and 20-over (T20), during a competitive season and can be involved in ~ approximately 80 – 90 days of matchplay across a period of 180 days. Despite the high volume of cricket, an individual may be exposed to across a playing season, the match demands, and how they vary, of professional men’s county cricketers are currently unknown. Understanding the differences in the demands of 4-day, 50-over and T20 cricket, as well as the variability of these demands is crucial in assisting strength & conditioning coaches in the preparation of professional cricketers. Research conducted in Australia (Peterson et al., 2010) has shown that differences exist between multi-day (3-day) competition in comparison to 50-over and T20 cricket; the shorter formats being more intense, with 50 – 100% more sprinting per hour, whereas multi-day cricket resulted in greater overall load (more sprinting per day). More recently the demands and variability of English International fast bowlers during 50-over and T20 matches were reported by Bliss et al. (2020), with T20 more intense than 50-over matches. Further to this, within and between-player variability ranged from 3.6% (maximum velocity) to 83.8% (accelerations > 4 m.s-2), suggesting there is a significant challenge in preparing and monitoring fast bowlers. 

The aims of this research project are 1) to quantify the match demands of 4-day, 50-over and T20 matches, and 2) report the variability in demands in English professional county cricketers. This project will aid sport scientists and strength & conditioning coaches in the preparation and monitoring of English county cricketers.

This work will be aligned with the Centre for Human Performance 

Applicants are encouraged to discuss their proposals with the project lead Dr Josh Darrall-Jones ([Email Address Removed]).