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I will start with two experiences I had on the above subject. One was in 2009, when I fancied investigating the secrets of fast and bouncy cricket pitches and my research team met with the then chief curator of Sri Lanka Cricket. We tried our best to convince him that “there is engineering behind pitch preparations” and until the media started a wide protest against him, he was not supportive. Finally, because of our continuous struggle, we managed to dig the secrets and Sri Lanka Cricket was benefited eventually, but still they are not fond of making a pilot pitch, because there is no engineer serving in the Sri Lanka Cricket.
The second incidence happened when I had to be a part of the investigation team on the newly built synthetic track of the Sugathadasa Stadium. There had been several allegations and partly those actions were responsible for the ultimate failure. But for me, as an engineer, lack of engineering input was the main cause for the damage. The engineer who supervised the project did not have any experience on synthetic track construction and he had not been able to control the pressure of “urgency” to complete the project before a major event.
You may be having more stories than me, but, still my question is valid. Where are we in Sports Engineering?
I urge the engineering community to be a part of this novel field which only became official in 1998 when the Sports Engineering Research Group and the International Sports Engineering Association were formed at the University of Sheffield. Sports engineers are typically involved in equipment design, lab experiments and testing, computational modeling, field testing, working with sportsmen and sportswomen and most importantly with governing bodies (unfortunately most are having expertise in some other businesses).
Sports engineering is a multi faceted and multi disciplinary filed of engineering. If you have a “say” in meetings where “sports” are discussed, please persuade the others to involve engineers who are willing to contribute; it will definitely be an enormous benefit for the country, both in the results of games and monetary matters.
Udeni P. Nawagamuwa
nawagamuwa@gmail.com
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