The technology, which is a collaboration between the International Cricket Council (ICC); the Marylebone Cricket Club; the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) and Griffith University, was recently tested at the AIS.

Project Manager Dr Marc Portus, of Praxis Sport Science, said he hoped the technology would be ready for general use by early 2015.

Dr Portus said the technology involves data being fed to computers via lightweight ‘inertia sensors’ attached to the bowler for analysis using 3D graphics.

The data collected during the recent testing will now be analysed with the final stage of the project being to adapt the sensors so they can easily be used in training and match conditions.

'Our hope is that the technology can be used at a junior level (as) more of a screening exercise and remediation tool as well as being used by coaches to nip the problem in the bud before they actually get to international cricket,' Dr Portus said.
'It can also be used as a coaching tool to help improve performance.

'We’re at a protocol stage at the moment and we’re validating the prototypes. They’re costing about $120 a unit at the moment.  We hope the final product, with a bit more volume in production, should drop down to half that or a bit less than half that.  So it should be affordable, disposable even, lightweight and comfortable.'

Dr Portus said the use of the technology by cricket officials to test bowlers’ actions should make the assessment process more objective.

'It should take a lot of the emotion out of a player having a suspicious or doubtful action or an illegal action,' he said.

AIS Biomechanist Wayne Spratford said the second phase of adapting the technology to more match-like conditions would include sending data back to research partner Griffith University for analysis.

'Once we get through this phase of validation, we’ll go into a phase of miniaturisation to again make it smaller so it’s less intrusive.'