Spektakom power bat sticker – Anil Kumble & Microsoft are making a smart cricket bat sticker

Anil Kumble – he is a former Indian cricketer and captain of test and ODI team. He is the third highest wicket-taker in the test of all time as of 2018. Kumble has the record of dismissal of all 10 players in a single inning of a test match. He dismissed 10 players of Pakistan in 1999 at Firozshah Kotla ground of Delhi. He was awarded by India’s fourth highest civilian honor Padam Shri in 2005.

Kumble comes in the list of top educated cricketers, he completed his bachelor of engineering in mechanical engineering.

First time when Kumble gets the technology in Indian cricket was 1996. He created a software package as an extension of cricket scoring sheet to gather data for analysis.

And now, he is developing a sensor sticker which uses Microsoft Cloud infrastructure and AI / Machine Learning techniques and IOT to translate each shot into easy to understand batting parameters for deep real-time analytics of batting.

What is Purpose of the Spektacom power bat sticker

It will collect the data regarding your batting style and then will help you to analyze that and improve it.

How would you measure that you are improving in your weak points of batting? Your coach tells you that your head position is not correct, your bat swing is incorrect and gives you some tips to improve that. You work on to improve these areas but how do you measure that you are improving. Measurement totally depends on coach experience.

Spektacom bat sticker will collect the data while you are batting and then you and your coach can analyze the data to measure how much you improved and can plan accordingly.

That’s a simple use case for players.

It help to:

1. Players
2. Coach
3. Fans
4. Broadcaster

How Spektacom power bat sticker help players

One use case we already discussed, it helps players to analyse their batting style and find out the weakness and then you can measure the progress every day.

Isn’t sounds good?

Yeah! It gives me a good insight to work on my weakness and will tell how I am progressing on my weaknesses.

How would you measure that you are improving in your weak points of batting?

Without it, you are dependent on coach experience to tell your weakness.

Let’s say, Your coach tells you that your head position is not correct, your bat swing is incorrect or face of the bat is not right and then tell some drills to improve that.

You work on these to improve these areas but how do you measure that you are improving. In the current scenario, measurement of progress totally depends on coach experience. You both don’t have any data to see the progress.

Here is Speaktacom innovation comes to make your and coach life easy. It gives you data to analyse your progress and then you can easily make a decision for the next step. You can use Spektacom app to see all this data.

The next use case is, you can not even analyse your batting style but also can look the statics of your favourite player.

You can see how Virat Kohli plays the square drive and can follow his style in drill and can check your data to make sure where are you to follow his style.

Wow, sound interesting.

It can be deployed on any bat, you can see some of best cricket bat for leather ball if you are looking to have a new one in your kit.

How Spektacom power bat help coaches – be a better coach

As a coach, you could not personally give attention to each and every student while they are on net practice. You always have to available with them and have to keep a close eye on the batting of your student.

But what if you get a chance to review the progress of each student in a meaningful manner whenever you have time.

Yes! that’s Spektacom innovation comes in to make your life easy and makes you a better coach.

Using the Spektacom app, you can access the more data-driven meaningful information of your students so you can plan for them accordingly.

Spektacom cloud service keeps all the historical data so coaches and other users can access it anytime anywhere.

Here are few powerful things which you can use to improve your coaching advice.

1. Improve training – each student has different skills. When you the data about your student batting, you can provide a better advice to develop their skill.

2. Dashboard: All the data received from the Spektacom sticker, you can see on a dashboard in App so you can systematically analyse the player improvement.

3. Access data anytime anywhere: You can always view and analyse the player performance with Spektacom mobile app.

4. Identify player profile – You can easily identify top performer and power hitter and then can guide them with new data points. Similarly, you can identify the low performer and can advise them drills to make the improvement.

How Spektacom power bat help fan – take your fandom on next level

How much you would enjoy when your favorite fast bowler throws the ball 160+ kph.

It’s amazing to see, isn’t it?

Speed gun radar used to measure the speed of the ball.

Similarly, as a fan, I would be amazed to know how much power MSD used to play a helicopter shot. How much power Rohit Sharma used to play pull shot.

It will be more amazing when comparison start between to stars and it would be seen as a record like the fastest ball is recorded on the name of Shoaib Akhtar.

Soon, you will see a record of the most powerful shot.

Spektacom did partnership with Star sport to show the Spektacom power Speks.

How Spektacom power bat help broadcasters

Engage your viewers, fans by showing the power in the shot, bat speed, bat twist and shot quality.

The broadcaster can deliver the real-time shot measurement on the TV screen by using a dedicated stump box placed on the field.

Stump box placed on the field takes the data from sensor sticker and send to Microsoft Azure cloud.

Spektacom provides easy to integrate API which takes required data from Azure cloud and provide to a broadcaster to display on a TV screen, mobile application or web streaming.

How to use Spektacom sticker

You can use it in 4 easy steps:

1. Install Spektacom sticker on to the back of bat
2. Download Spektacom app from play store or iTune store
3. Register and set up your profile and then link up your sticker to app
4. Play with bat and start receiving insight into your app.

 

How Spektacom works?

In Spektacom kit, you would mainly receive a non-intrusive sensor as a sticker. The sticker is same as a credit card in size and weight is less than 5 gram.

We need to glue this sticker behind of the bat. It is designed to be placed on any bat.

It comes with a wireless charger so handy to charge.

Apart from the sticker, it has a stump box which needs to be placed behind the stumps.

When the ball hit the bat, sensor sticker collects the data to measure the power, quality of the shot and then send it to stump box via Bluetooth.

It works in following 5 steps:

1. Sensor sticker collect the information and send to stump box via Bluetooth
2. Stum box connects to Microsoft Azure services, and send data to it
3. Microsoft AI machine learning technology use the data to measure the quality and power of the shot
4. After processing of Microsoft AI, it store data into a database
5. And then send to the mobile or desktop application to show the data to users

In case of amateur player scenario, The sticker pairs with Spektacom mobile app instead of stump box to transfer and analyze data in Azure.

The solution is powered by Azure Sphere (Stump box), Azure IoT Hub, Azure Event Hub, Azure Functions, Azure Cosmos DB and Azure ML 2.0.

Below is the solution architect of it.

Learn more about Microsoft AI Lab.

Where to buy Spektacom power bat sticker

I sent a request from Spektacom contact form from their website and sent a message on their official twitter account. I will update here once I would know how we can get it.

Competitor or similar innovation – Intel powered IOT product named BatSense

There is another company Speculur working on same segement. They are making a device which can be plugged on the top part of the handle and then it sensor collect the data and send to their servers to analyse.

 

Conclusion

Technology is being changed rapidly by using AI, IOT and machine learning and that would make the game more competitive. I am looking to get this product see in action. Placed Pre-order for Speculur as the have option for it. Hope would get my own Spektacom kit soon.

Refrences

I have read out many of the articles, videos to research about this product. Here are some of them where I earned knowledge about Spektacom and speculur IOT device.

• Spektacom official website
• Microsof Azure blog about Spektacom power bat
• Speculur official website