Most of the time when you watch any cricket match and after any bowler bowls a ball you might be wondered to see at the scoreboard scroll, where the speed of the bowler is displayed in both miles per hour and also in Km/hr.

Well, to be frank even I had no idea about what technology they were using and my guess went way back to my school days to Sixth standard physics.

I used to play cricket right from my childhood and one day I was very much interested in knowing the speed of my bowling. I was not aware of any technologies that time and from my point of I thought in International matches they also used the formula

Velocity = Distance/ Time

So I thought by knowing the time and the distance we can measure the speed of a cricket ball. And so I’ve asked my friend to use the stop clock in his watch and I also asked to on it when I released the ball and when it was interrupted by the batsman I asked to stop him.

So I’ve got the timings but I am not sure as I couldn’t recollect it at present, and earlier we did some measurements of the pitch, i.e. the distance from the bowling crease to that of the batting crease. I also got some observations which I knew was wrong and at that time I thought I would have done something wrong in the pitch measurement or my friend would have done some error.

After that we left all these experiments and continued playing May be the idea would have been correct, but the experiment must have been wrong. Really it looks very funny, right.

Well after that I’ve got some information to share with you how they measure the speed of the bowler with the latest technology. Well the answer is Radar Gun which is also called as the speed gun. Well, physics does play a great role in technology, because the principle behind this technology is the Doppler Effect.

You don’t need to worry about this technology because it is just measuring devices that are used by the traffic police to measure the speed of any vehicle.

So it is a very good technology commonly used in all places and with some advancement it is also implemented in cricket.Bryce K. Brown of Decatur Electronics found this Radar Gun in March 1954.But practically it was first implemented in April 1954 at Chicago, Illinois by Patrolman Leonard Baldy .The image below shows how a speed of the car is measured by the police vehicle which has the radar gun.

Their operation is quite simple because they just emit a laser light in a narrow or intense beam and these beams usually reflects when they hit the cricket ball and they are again picked by the speed gun and during the second part of the process when it is reflected back to the speed gun, the speed gun also measures the time taken to return back. Usually the radar frequencies are different when they are returned back and this is also used to measure the speed of the cricket ball.

Usually a speed camera is used for this purpose and the most important thing is that these can’t be fixed straight to the batsman or bowler and they are usually fixed at the side of the pitch ( I am sorry friends as I am not very sure that these cameras are present inside the ground, but I guess they will be present at the side boundaries, parallel to the pitch).

Normally the laser light which are used by these radar guns are outside the visible range, with wavelengths ranging from 700 to1000 nanometres.The length of the pitch is around 20.1 meters and for measuring the speed of the ball we need to know the distance.In this case we consider only 18 meter as the 1 meter each from the bowler end and batsmen end are normally subtracted.

The readings obtained from this speed gun are normally transmitted to the computer which has the capability to process the speed and also calibrated with the distance of the pitch, and as soon as the speed gun traces the information , the speed is calculated and so it is displayed on the television.The speed is usually displayed in both miles/hr and km/hr.

The latest technology which is yet to be introduced is the cricket ball which measures the speed on its own and as a matter of fact the important thing about this ball is that it even has a display on its side, which eventually gives the reading of the speed delivered by the bowler.

The image above shows the ball that we have discussed and as shown it has a LCD display on its side, which displays the speed and moreover this also has a battery and depending upon the battery used the life of this cricket ball last.This is a very new technology and ICC has yet to approve this.

This new technology is going to overtake the radar gun that is used at present and this is going to be the king of all the speed technologies used so far and once this ball is introduced this is going to create anxiety among all the viewers and moreover I guess apart form viewing from the LCD display in the ball, it will also be ensured that a signal will be transmitted so that it can be observed and displayed in the Live broadcast.

The reason why that many expert feel this is the best to measure speed is because this gives the accurate value than that of the radar gun technologies that is used at present and as a result it will be more reliable than that of the radar gun.

But practical drawbacks must also be considered while we use these kind of balls, because this kind of technologies must not interrupt the way in which the present ball is used,i.e the weight and other factors must also be taken into account before making this practically possible.But it has also passed that test and it weighs around 163 grams which is the standard weight of any cricket ball.So we can soon see Shoaib Akhtar's record speed of 161.3 Kph or 100.2 mph cab be broken and it can be seen in the LCD display.

The way in which this ball works is different from that of the radar gun method, because this ball has a inbuilt speed sensor which measures the time between the release from the bowler hand and when it hit the batsman's bat or keeper's glove.This makes it more reliable and accurate as the radar gun technology calculates the speed from the release of the bowler's hand and at the place where it strikes the pitch.

Well when we discuss this issue another problem that comes in this new technology is that when this ball is used the speed might vary under different condition for similar type of balls,i.e consider bowler bowls at a speed of 140 km/hr and with this new ball technology, it measures speed accordingly it hit a target after the release.Now consider two condition

i)The ball was interrupted by the batsman

ii)The batsman leaves the ball and the keeper takes it.

So when we consider the above two conditions, it is clear that the same ball shows different speed as the target is batsman's bat in the first condition and the next time it is the keeper gloves.Apart from this many feel that if the batsman hits the ball very hard there might be a chance that the ball might get damaged.

The cost of this ball is around 2000 rupees.So there are some disadvantages in this technology also and if it is overcome it will be the future and the ICC will also consider to implement this technology.