Cricket
Cricket
How a Bengaluru engineer built cricket’s first non-electric bowling machine
Pratheek Palanethra recounts the years in which he struggled to keep his passion for cricket alive and how it led to him inventing a much-needed piece of cricket training equipment.
When Pratheek Palanethra moved to Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, USA, to pursue a Masters degree, the one thing he felt he was leaving back home in India was his chance to play cricket whenever he wanted.
While it was easy to bring together a few friends to play near his home in Bengaluru – even if it was just gully cricket with tennis balls – he knew he would have to make an active effort to keep his love for cricket alive in the United States.
And so, he joined the Lehigh Valley Cricket Club as a player. Soon after he also joined the logistics, operations and sponsorship departments for the Cricket All-Stars Series which brought the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne to the USA to play a few games of cricket in 2015.
Passion giving birth to a venture
Before moving to the US, Pratheek had been a regular cricket player. He started playing the sport when he was two years old and carried on to the stage of representing Karnataka in the zonals tournament.
He did not want to give up his passion while in the USA, but he found few options to train. Most of the players weren’t at the level he was used to, and even if he could get to net sessions, they were extraordinarily inconvenient and expensive; he would have to drive almost three hours to the closest practice facility where each two-hour net session would cost him 200 USD (Rs 13,863).
Wanting to get the best training he could manage within a decent price range near the comfort of his home, Pratheek started looking for bowling machines.
Pratheek Palanethra with the Freebowler Superthrower
© Mohit Damani
He had a particular need – he wanted a compact bowling machine that could be carried around easily, ran without electricity, and would bowl actual cricket balls instead of plastic coated synthetic balls that electric bowling machines come with.
“I started doing some research online to buy something like this. But to my surprise, I just couldn't find anything,” said Pratheek.
Shocked that in over 150 years of cricket’s existence, no portable, inexpensive and non-electric machine had been invented, the engineer took it upon himself to build this machine.
“I was also doing my final year Masters project and was looking for a topic for it. So that's when I took the concept to my professor, and he immediately gave the nod,” Pratheek added.
“From then on, I started building mock-ups, prototypes, wireframes and bare minimum sketches. Six months down the line, I got some funding from a local government organisation, which further helped me continue the project. During all these developments, I also had my roommate and my classmate from the Master's program, Justin Jacobs, join me as a founding partner of the company Freebowler.”
What peeved Pratheek the most into inventing this bowling machine was that he had known of many other cricketers who had to give up their dream of becoming professional players because of a lack of facilities.
“I figured a lot of cricketers had the same problem at some point in their life, i.e., to choose academics or sports, or they had to give up just because they did not have access to training aids at an affordable price point. After giving up professional cricket, I missed the sport a lot. I just didn't want anybody else to miss cricket. Nobody should be deprived of cricket,” said Pratheek.
What started as a way to keep his passion for cricket alive ended up with Pratheek inventing the bowling machine called the Freebowler Superthrower – the world’s first affordable, non-electric, manual bowling machine that can be operated with real cricket balls.
The bowling arm and a foot lever have to be loaded in the spring first
© Mohit Damani
How the Freebowler Superthrower works
The Superthrower has a ball-throwing arm that simulates a bowlers’ arm. The end of the bowling arm has a ball-holding cup that mimics the bowlers’ wrist position. Real cricket balls can be placed into the cup to be delivered without them getting damaged by the machine.
To operate the machine, the bowling arm and foot lever are individually pulled down and locked into place; this activates the spring mechanism of the Superthrower. The ball is then placed in the cup, and a lever is pressed to release the bowling arm, ejecting the ball at the batter to simulate a fast bowler’s delivery.
With adjustments to the angle and orientation of the cup, the length of the ball can be changed. Adjusting the connection between the bowling arm and the foot pedal can provide variations in the speed of the delivery. Adjusting the way the machine is angled, by tapping it from behind, can change the line of the delivery ranging from outside leg stump to on-the-stumps to outside off-stump.
Since real cricket balls are used, alternating between new and old balls on particular pitches can also give batters more practice in dealing with real-game situations.
More so, a Superthrower delivery can attain a maximum speed of 140 kmph, which is within the range of what most fast bowlers around the world bowl regularly.
The 40-inch length of the Superthrower folds down into a portable size
© Mohit Damani
The convenience of the Superthrower is what tends to be the most favourable thing about it. Since it is lever operated, it does not need physical strength of a bowler, or someone operating throw-down arms. It can also be operated by someone who doesn’t have a working knowledge of cricket since all they have to do is pull a lever once the machine has been assembled.
At 40-inches in length and a collapsible body that can fit into a bag, the Superthrower is also portable. And since it doesn’t need electricity, it can be operated outdoors too.
How Pratheek hopes the Superthrower can help cricketers
The Superthrower has been demonstrated to a few big names of India’s cricketing circuit, including Rahul Dravid, Cheteshwar Pujara, KL Rahul and Ravichandran Ashwin.
Pratheek says that several Ranji teams have also incorporated the Superthrower as part of their net sessions.
KL Rahul with Pratheek and the Superthrower
© Pratheek Palanethra
Karnataka player KV Siddharth – who scored a memorable maiden first-class century against Mumbai in the 2018 Ranji Trophy – has also played against the Superthrower and found it very realistic.
“You can’t find bowlers when you want to bat! This is the best thing for when you want to practice by yourself. It’s a very good change for all the cricketers, the advantage being that we don’t need electricity and we can carry it everywhere, and it’s very helpful and very handy,” said Siddharth.
Having grown up in a small town called Tumkur, 70kms away from Bengaluru, Pratheek did not have the best cricket facilities in his budding years.
“I know the struggles of a small town cricket setup. 70% of the cricket in India constitutes rural or semi-urban cricket where cricket is tough, both competition and monetary wise. So I know what a training aid like Freebowler means to them. It's almost a must-have thing for the rural cricket setups and kids growing up can face match simulations, which helps them compete better with the guys from the bigger urban areas where they have access to better training aids and resources,” said Pratheek.
When designing the Superthrower, Pratheek kept in mind what would be the needs of the people using the machine.
They would need top-level training so they could compete with the best in the world – the use of real cricket balls achieves that. They would need it to be convenient – this is achieved by it being lever-operated and not requiring physical strength or cricket know-how, plus it is portable. And lastly, they would need it to be affordable – this is achieved by the machine costing just around Rs 30,000.
Standard electric bowling machines around the world cost at least Rs 2 lakhs, and are mostly purchased by larger academies and training centres in urban areas, where most facilities are already available. Pratheek wanted to create something that would be useful to people that don’t have world-class facilities.
"The mission of Freebowler was always to help grow cricket in rural areas, especially for youth and women. Women's cricket too needs a lot of attention, so training aids like these will provide more opportunities to aspiring women cricketers to pick up the game and pursue it. Women's cricket at the club level needs a lot of groundwork to make it competitive. With the Freebowler we believe we can vastly help how women cricketers are viewed especially in India,” said Pratheek.
