Big Data Analytics can help prevent sports injuries
Mumbai Indians were in for a shock when they discovered that Lasith Malinga, the Sri Lankan fast bowler, was ruled out of the IPL. He had been battling a persistent knee injury. Ditto Kevin Petersen, who left his fans disappointed due to a calf injury—breaking the hearts of millions of his supporters. Thedamage is most seriously inflicted on teams, who lose out on the match-winning and crowd-pulling factor of their star players and are forced to re-strategize.
It is a financial setback for sponsors too who paid tons of money to sign the player.
According to a survey conducted by Deskera, a Cloud-based Analytics company, players lose between 20 and 35 percent of their salaries due to injuries, with 10% of these injuries being serious, causing long-term harm.
And it is not only the big league players who fall prey to the vicissitudes of physical competition.
Mushtaque Ahmad, a budding pacer from Patna, represented his university in 2009. He quickly becamea local hero, drawing comparisons with the likes of Botham and Imran Khan. Mushtaque quickly climbedthe ladder and was in the reckoning for representing his state in 2009. Things were indeed bright for theyoung fellow until disaster struck in the form of knee injury.
Could all this have been avoided? This is the question that a lot of technology buffs are trying to answer.
A combination of latest technologies such as Big Data Analytics, Cloud and Internet of Things promisesto help sports management teams avoid such setbacks by reducing the risk of injuries.
Players are made to wear a non-obtrusive vest equipped with sensors; thus, all vital parameters arerecorded and analyzed. Not only that, actionable data is also collected from various others sources aswell such as video, text, and historical structured and unstructured data. All that produces real-timeanalytics that a physio or physical trainer would find useful in managing the well-being of a player.
Generally, there are several factors that can result in sports injuries—exhaustion during training,hydration levels, weather, age of the player, and technique. Data is compiled from different sourcessuch as training, physical fitness tests, matches, demographics, and location.
A statistical formula is applied to derive the risk of injury. The risk of each kind of injury for a player isconsidered and presented with simple representations to the team coaches and physiotherapists. Theyare also given the possible reasons for the risk, so that suitable remedial measures can be taken. Thesimulation capability enables trainers and physiotherapists to comprehend problematic areas.
The new Cloud-based Big Data tool Improves efficiency in player treatment with an injury catalog, whichhelps in managing injury and treatment and registers the data of each player to help physiotherapiststrack critical health parameters. Sports organizations can help identify weaknesses or changes inperformance early on, maximize player availability, and consequently prevent injury. The technologyprovides sports organizations greater visibility into players' health parameters, including emergingtrends and growing risks. Big Data Analytics predicts, monitors, and helps implement relevantintervention programs by analyzing huge quantities of available data together with live data to helpcompute the possible risk of injury to yield personalized management of players' well-being.
The career of a fast bowler is limited to only a few prime years to excel. Injuries have the potential todestroy the career of a player. Many of these injuries are non-accidental in nature and they can beprevented if the risk is detected early.
The new technology identifies the risks and on the basis of thatAnalytics, players can be placed in customized health and training programs to prevent injuries. It alsoextrapolates patterns, with mathematical predictive models forecasting possibilities of injury. Unlimitednumber of factors can be analyzed and patterns and relations culled from the data. This capability willhelp team physiotherapists to identify problem areas for the player and the factors adding to the risk ofinjury. A key feature of the solution is also the ability to generate custom risk profiles for each athleteand define tailored personal intervention programs.
"In terms of evaluating bowlers when they come into the laboratory, we give them a comprehensiveanalysis of their alignment of their shoulders and their hips during delivery. It's a 3D analysis," saidSydney University cricket biomechanics researcher Dr Eduard Rene Ferdinands in a news article aboutthe Big Data technology, and who specializes in motion analysis and dynamics modeling.
"We map the kinematics of the entire body and develop a performance profile including injury riskareas. Then sit down with the player and after evaluating their previous history of injury, work outwhether any technical interventions are necessary," he added.
Aussie pacer Shaun Tait, who had to retire early from international cricket due to a history of injuries,said: "I wish this had happened 13 years ago. Technology like this is proof that sometimes you need torest for a couple of days. You can manage players through a series or a season. This is the besttechnology I've seen for fast bowlers."
With the advent of this new technology, it is hoped that the Mushtaques of India don't have to warmthe benches and miss out on the action on the ground.
The author Muqbil Ahmar is a Senior Editor, Deskera (www.deskera.in), Cloud-based Analytics Company
With more than 10 years of experience in the field of journalism, Muqbil Ahmar is a Senior Editor atDeskera, the leading business software company in the Asia-Pacific region. Armed with an M.Phil inScience Policy Studies, he looks at technology from the prism of society. He believes technology has toadd meaning to the lives of people for whom it was created in the first place. He wants to bring aboutbetter understanding between the two worlds so that they do not act against each other but in mutuallybeneficial ways so that the world becomes a better place to live in and to leave for future generations.
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