hello welcome to this exam question video today we are looking at aqa gcse and we are focusing
on question 18 from this past paper and we've got this question here justify why reaction time
is important for a cricketer now two things two or three things really to bear in mind for this
question firstly we've got this word justify now this command word tells us that they're looking
for ao3 information so not just a definition not just the the relevance of that definition
to physiology but actually the relevance of something in sport what is this term or this
factor of sport what does it actually mean for a performer in a real life situation the
situation we've been given is cricketer and the point of term or point of definition that we're
being asked to apply to sport is reaction time so we're looking at why reaction time
is important why it's relevant why it has an impact on the success of a cricketer and it's
giving us three marks so we're looking for three separate reasons why this term is important in
this context now this question can be worded in a number of different ways it can be justified
why coordination is important for a rounders player justify why speed is important for a
games player such as a footballer or netballer or basketballer you could substitute this component
of fitness or skill with any sporting context and it would be the same process of question
trying to find out or trying to to pen to paper three different reasons from a sporting context
so with this one here we need to be thinking of cricket what different roles are there in cricket
we've got the bowler we've got the batter we've got the deep filters we've got the close filters
we've got the wicket keeper so we've got lots of different people lots of different players
that are responding to situations in a slightly different way every single phase of play so if we
start with the batter possibly the more the most crucial part of the game so why is reaction time
important for a batter well first of all reaction time what is it it's the the delays
the lag time of the onset of the stimulus and the initiation of the response not the movement itself
because that's the movement time and not the or not these two things combined which is the
lag time plus the movement time because that's the overall response time we're only concerned
with this lag time so if someone has a longer lag time a longer delay of beginning their response
then how is that going to hinder them in sport in cricket so a batter if they take longer
to react or to actually initiate their response to a stimulus such as the bowling speed or the spin
of a ball or the swing of a ball if they take too long then they might miss the contact point
they might not be able to hit it at an optimal angle or at an optimal point to be able to apply
force to get the ball to go in a certain direction to go as far as they want it to go so if they take
too long for example when the ball is already up close to them they might only be able to play a
shot directly out to the right or perhaps well not even that loading to the left because they
have to get all the way around their body in order to play that shot so perhaps they might be able to
play just off to the right just off behind them because they haven't got the reaction time to get
the bat out in front of them first and to meet that oncoming ball for a spin bowler they will
have to wait for that ball to actually land and then initiate their response by the time that
ball is balanced and it's spun off in a different direction personal a batter with a slow reaction
time the ball might already be going too far past them before they actually get around to trying to
make a contact point so very important for a batter in order to implement an effective shot
boulder why is the reaction time of ebola important in cricket well it might be
on their run up the batter decides to make some mind new changes in their stance in their grip
in their in their posture and that might determine where the bowler wants to place the ball now these
might be a subtle change and anything too much is obviously you know against the rules of cricket
but by watching that batter and by thinking about and watching all the different changes
all the different stance alterations that the battle might be making they're all playing in
to the bowler's mind and that might alter what decision they end up having to make filters
in the deep field they probably not it's not not too bad to have a slow reaction time because once
the ball goes up a split second difference isn't going to you know impact the overall game of them
sprinting 20 meters to chase down the ball might but maybe not a huge thing so we can rule them out
but a close fielder maybe someone in the slips maybe someone you know a silly bit off or
something like that where they're you know 5 10 15 meters away from the batter let's say that batter
you know makes contact and that ball is going towards that close in fielder they need to be able
to not just not just catch it but they need to be able to see the fly to that ball the speed of
the ball the angle the flight path to be able to then think about what response they need to give
and if they've only got you know a second and a half reaction time which is very slow
but that in a second and a half that board has probably already gone past them they're going
to miss the opportunity to catch they're going to miss the opportunity to fill the ball and suddenly
the batter will have more time to make the runs and pick up points and perhaps lastly the wicket
keeper similar scenario with that thinking time and the speed of reaction whereby if they are slow
to react then they might miss an easy catch that's when the ball comes down and the batter you know
does a fine edge or something and the wicketkeeper could have caught it but they get to the the end
point they get to the catch point a little bit too late because there was that lag between the ball
hitting the edge of the bat then thinking and registering what just happened the ball's already
gone past them and then they try and catch up with it so justify why reaction time is important for
a cricketer for a batter it means that they can contact the ball or they can adjust to alterations
in ball flights close in fielders it means that they are able to get into a an effective catching
position as soon as the ball is struck by the batter and then a wicketkeeper they can adjust
their body position they can adjust their hands their arms their gloves so they can respond to
fine edges or slight changes in the bowl to make sure they catch that ball every time to either get
the batter out or to prevent it going past them and possibly running for a fall but key thing to
remember is that this question here could be for any sort of context so make sure you know not just
what all of the component fitness are but how and why they are important not just for
one sport but for a range of sports and an easy way to think about answering these questions are
what are the roles what are the demands in the sport and what would a performer look
like if they had or didn't have that component of fitness so a cricketer with bad reaction time
what would that look like a cricketer with good reaction time what would that look like and it's
in that positive scenario that you want to be finding the benefits of that component
and that's that so i hope you found it useful and i'll see you again in the next one bye for now