Investigation of the Cricket Ball Swing using CFD Modelling: Effect of Rotation and Surface Roughness

Abstract

For many years, lateral flight of the cricket ball has been equally fascinating the players and the
spectators. The cricket ball, whose outer shell is a two piece stitched-up leather, follows certain aerodynamics
principles which have been explored in the past few decades, particularly for the ‘reverse swing’. The factors which
contribute to the side-ways swing of the ball are ball speed, seam position, rotation speed and roughness proportion
on both sides of the ball. Several CFD studies have been conducted to investigate aerodynamics of the cricket ball,
but due to over-simplified ball geometry, bluff seam shape and adoption of non-rotating models while neglecting
Magnus effect, those models were not able to capture the actual phenomenon of lateral swing. In this study, CFD
model is created which takes into account exact 3D geometry of the ball in accordance with standard IS 10800 which
can help to visualize the effect of actual seam, ball rotation, ball speed and ball roughness on conventional and
reverse swing. It was found that ball tends to swing towards smooth side irrespective of rotation however lift force is
affected mostly by the ball speed.