Dynamic visual acuity training in cricket players

Abstract

Background: Dynamic visual acuity (DVA) is the ability of an observer to correctly identify details of a moving target and is considered to be important for tasks like driving. Dynamic Visual Acuity is better in athletes involved in sports such as basketball and baseball; however, no previous studies have considered the sport of cricket. We conducted a study to determine whether there was any difference in DVA between cricket and non-cricket players. Method: Dynamic visual acuity was measured by asking subjects to identify the orientation of the gap of a moving Landolt C target as a four-alternative forced-choice task. The Landolt C targets had confusion bars surrounding them. The participants in the study were tested twice with a break of seven weeks. In between the two measurements, participants underwent two training sessions (similar to the testing sessions), each three weeks apart. Results: The initial mean DVA for cricket players was 107.7 deg/sec, and the mean DVA for non-cricket players was 105.5 deg/sec, with a target size of 6/15. The subjects who participated in training (cricketers and non-cricketers) improved in DVA by 41 deg/sec in contrast to the improvement in the non-training subjects of 18 deg/sec (p=0.0032). The cricketers who participated in the training improved in DVA by 44 deg/sec, whereas the cricketers who did not participate in the training improved by 19 deg/sec (p=0.0167). Conclusions: We found no significant difference in initial DVA between the cricket players and the non-cricket players. The training resulted in an extremely significant improvement in DVA performance by both the cricketers and non-cricketers.