News

SAMBa's 24th Integrative Think Tank

SAMBa’s 24th Integrative Think Tank (ITT) was delivered in partnership with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering (DEEE).

The ECB oversee the professional men’s and women’s domestic game, as well as recreational cricket played by around two million people across the country each summer. They run participation programmes that give more than a million children and young people a chance to play cricket and invest in new pitches and facilities to give more people opportunities to play the game.

The Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering carry out basic and applied research at the frontiers of engineering and science, specialising in advanced sensor technologies, sustainable power distribution and space science. The academics attending the ITT collaborate with National Grid Energy Distribution, the UK’s largest electricity distribution network, covering 55,500 square kilometres and serving nearly 8 million customers.

The ITT model brings participants from across SAMBa together with external partners to reformulate large challenges into mathematical questions that will lead to collaborative research projects.

Problem formulation

To start off the week, partners presented a range of challenges which groups of participants discussed and reformulated mathematically, considering questions and approaches. For the remainder of the week, the participants worked in small teams of PhD students, staff and partners, each exploring a particular mathematical approach to one of the challenges.

ECB challenges:

• How do match schedule/format and travel demands impact batting form? Presenter: Nathan Fox.
• Can we utilise data from ball-tracking technology determine the patterns of batter dismissal? What is the most likely pattern of
  deliveries to dismiss batter X? Presenter: Farhan Tinwala.
• Can you forecast the likelihood of injury? What is the interplay between different risk factors for injury, and how do these
  relationships differ between individuals? Presenter: Pete Alway.

DEEE challenges:

• Planning for demand. National Grid has to facilitate the attachment of new customers (homes + business) to the network. They need to be able to plan and anticipate demand. They want to integrate different data sources to provide better estimates of current and future load. Presenter: Lewis Dale.
• Inferring infrastructure. Some equipment details are not well known in some circumstances (e.g., number of feeder lines from a
  substation, or e.g. location of a fault). Can monitoring data (voltages etc) be used to infer the network? Presenter: Nigel Turvey.
• Enabling renewables. We generate lots of wind power in the north and don’t always have the grid capability to employ it in the south, and hence end up using gas turbines at times when they theoretically shouldn’t be needed. NGED wants to model the effect of adding infrastructure to the grid to make the economic case for investment to allow the switch to renewables. Presenter: Furong Li

The ITT was brought to a close with students presenting the work done by their team during the week and making recommendations for potential future research directions.

Partner feedback

We at the ECB had a wonderful experience participating in the Integrative Think Tank. Cricket is a unique sport that presents players, coaches and medical practitioners with complex challenges, often without obvious solutions. The ITT provided an excellent opportunity to explore some of these questions through fresh perspectives and analytical thinking.

From a performance perspective, we posed questions around patterns of batter dismissals using ball-tracking data, as well as the impact of travel on batting performance. From a medical standpoint, students explored how multiple risk factors might be combined to estimate an individual’s day-to-day risk of lumbar bone stress injury.

We were hugely impressed by the enthusiasm, creativity and rigour that both the students and staff brought to tackling these problems. In particular, we appreciated their willingness to engage with the nuances of elite sport while developing practical and innovative approaches to answering challenging real-world questions.

Finally, one of the most valuable aspects of the experience was the ability to communicate complex mathematical concepts in clear, accessible language. This is an essential skill when working with practitioners who may not share the same technical background. We are extremely grateful for the time, effort and expertise contributed by everyone involved.

The collaboration demonstrated the value of bringing together expertise from different disciplines, and we hope to continue building links between mathematics and sport in the future.

Dr Peter Alway, Lead Sports Scientist: Health & Performance, England and Wales Cricket Board

Future research collaborations

Following the ITT, students compose technical reports which describe the potential of the research opportunities. ITT projects can lead to collaborative research for our SAMBa cohort, via PhD topics, or as smaller group projects or internship.

Through working with partners at SAMBa ITTs, we have built deep and long-term relationships.

Our next ITT

SAMBa’s 25th Integrative Think Tank will be held from 25-29 January 2027.