The New Catapulta

GH welcomes our new robot overlords

Bowling machines, eh? Do you love to hate them, or hate to love them? I mean, how more-ish is a succession of half volleys to smash into the side netting? But bowling machines, as any regular user will tell you, tend also to make their users into batting machines - they mechanise you by being so predictable. You start to anticipate; you stop watching the ball. They probably told Felix the same about the Catapulta.

Emerging from a bowling machine net, I tend to think two things. First, if we play a team of robots this Saturday, I’m taking them down. Second, wouldn’t it be good if there was a machine that could be programmed more exactly, introduced variations, that provided you with the sight of an incoming animated bowler, that recorded, played back and analysed every shot you played, even calculated your run tally on the basis of a fielding team whose dispositions you could influence and athleticism you could adjust? In search of the latter, I last week gave a Top Gear-style roadtest to Hitz, advertised as ‘the world’s first operator-less, AI-powered cricket training experience’, in one of its two laneways at Junction Oval. Or maybe it tested me - AI is a bit fuzzy that way.