Get sleep or get stumped: sleep behaviour in elite South African cricket players during competition

ABSTRACT

Despite evidence supporting the positive affect sleep has on sport performance, there is limited application of sleep research in cricket. This study investigated the sleep behaviours of 26 elite South African cricket players (28.6 ± 4.0 years) during home and away competition. Players completed an altered version of the Core Consensus Sleep Diary every morning post-travel, pre-match and post-match. Linear mixed model regression was used to compare differences in sleep between time-periods, venues and formats. Spearman’s correlations (r_s) assessed the relationship of match performance and sleep. Post-match total sleep time (06:31 ± 01:09) was significantly (p < 0.05) shorter compared to post-travel (07:53 ± 01:07; g = 1.19) and pre-match (08:43 ± 01:03; g = 1.98). Post-travel sleep onset latency and sleep efficiency were significantly shorter (−20; g = 1.35) and higher (+10.4%; g = 0.74) at home than away respectively. Longer sleep onset latencies and shorter total sleep times were significantly associated with poorer One-Day International (r_s = −0.57) and Test (r_s = 0.59) batting performances respectively. The poor post-match sleep behaviour, and the sleep and performance correlations, provide motive for future interventions to focus on recovery and the use of sleep monitoring as a competitive advantage.

KEYWORDS:

• Cricket
• sleep monitoring
• travel
• team-sport
• in-season

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Cricket South Africa and, in particular, Gregory King for allowing us to do this field-based study and for giving us access to the players who also must be acknowledged for the willingness to be involved.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The authors collected the data through a professional relationship with an organization and given special permission to use the data for this research project. As such, the data are not publicly available due to containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants and gatekeepers.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of South Africa under grant number [111772]. Any opinion, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors. Therefore, the National Research Foundation do not accept any liability in regard thereto.