LABORATORY CHAMPIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 216, 12 September 1925, Page 8

LABORATORY CHAMPIONS.

] When learned professors tackle any subject they usually do it in a very thorough, manner. Psychologists are endeavouring to evolve some universal ' notation movement for sport similar to the universal notation we already have in music. A cricketer will no longer he judged merely by his runs or by hia bowling average. His merits or demerits are to be decided by the exhibition of a slow motion picture of his performance. Professor Pear. Professor of Psychology at the University of Manchester, hopes— so we were told by cable the other day— by means of slow films to dispel the mystery which lingers about skill in sports. The Americans, always to the fore in experimental psychology, have conducted experiments to prove the relative values of golf and baseball. At Columbia University Walter Hagen was chosen to represent golf, and Babe Ruth to represent baseball. One test consisted of stabbing with pencils at letter "O's" on a revolving cylinder. Ruth was as fast as light, but he dotted away at , "OV half an inch from the centre. Hagen, on the other hand, struck only in the exact centre, and always struck ! late. This is said to prove that the golfer required conscious thought before he struck, whereas the batsman struck ! instinctively, thus confirming Grace's . opinion that if a cricketer waited to . think before hitting a long hop to leg he would be bowled. A special machine 1 has been invented for golfers., intended •to test ability to judge distance. On this machine the only pereon in the laboratory who could approach Hagen in j accuracy was an artist accustomed to j visual measurements. Psychologists claim j that champions will be able to be judged lin the laboratory with far more accuracy than is possible on the field. It may be that cricketers with low averages will be able to prove by laboratory tests -that they are in reality far ahead of Hobbs and Hendren. Selectors for test matches will be able to go to professors of psychology and choose their team after a month or two's experiments in the laboratory. Motion pictures of games are valuable, as all will agree who saw the remarkable slow pictures of golf strokes. The , cinematograph not only shows how strokes should be made, and enables the skill of a Hobbe or a Lenglen to be represented in action in any part of the world at any moment, but 'proves that the underlying principles of movement are much the same in all games. There is. however, a danger of the theory of games being pursued with disproportionate seriousness. Probably most people will prefer to regard games as games, and will acclaim as champion the man who makes most runs or takes most wickets, quite irrespective of anything slow films may be able to show of his merits or demerits.