నైరూప్య

Cross Dominance in Cricketers.

Vinodha R, Indumathi D, Precilla Catherine A, and Shanmugapriya C.

Ocular dominance sometimes called eye dominance or eyedness may be particularly important for certain sports which require accurate aim (eg: Cricket).It has been proved that cross dominance (in which the dominant eye is on one side and the dominant hand is on the other) is beneficial in sports requiring side-on stances (baseball, cricket, golf etc.).However, certain studies found that cricketers were not more likely to have cross-dominance. The present study was therefore conducted to determine whether the cricketers have cross dominance. This study was done at Physiology Research laboratory, Thanjavur Medical College, Thanjavur. 23 medical students were participated. 21 were batsmen and 2 bowlers. Subjects with corneal opacity, squint, colour blindness, those on miotics or mydriatics and those with other neuromuscular disorders were excluded. Ocular dominance was first tested by Miles test and then VEPs (Visual Evoked Potentials) were performed by checkerboard pattern reversal stimuli system. In this study, out of the 23 cricketers, 5 cricketers showed cross dominance (Right handed with left eye dominant) & 18 cricketers showed non-cross dominance (Right handed with right eye dominant). Cross dominance cricketers did not show significant difference with non-cross dominance cricketers in relation to amplitude. However, significant differences were observed in P100 latency. We found that cross dominance, exists in very few percentage of cricketers. In future, we hope to extend this work on larger data set to determine the cross dominance. Further studies can also be carried out to determine whether performance difference exists between cross dominant and non-cross dominant cricketers.