How to Build a Cricket Bowling Machine

If you’re an American, there is a decent chance you’ve been to a baseball batting cage sometime in your life. At the very least, you’re probably familiar with them. The machines in those cages are designed to simply pitch a baseball at you in roughly the same place every time. But cricket is played in more countries than baseball is, and cricket players need batting practice too. Luckily you can follow this guide from YouTube channel Creativity Buzz to build your very own crick bowling machine.

Baseball and cricket may look similar from a distance, but the rules and equipment are quite different. One of the most notable of those differences is between pitching and bowling. In cricket, fast bowlers will usually bounce the ball off the ground before it reaches the pitch. That means a bowling machine needs to perform differently than a pitching machine. For this bowling machine, fast bowling with a bounce was achieved with a dual-wheel design. One wheel is driven by the motor of an angle grinder, while the second wheel spins freely.

Balls are loaded into a hopper, and a servo sits below the hopper. At set intervals that are controlled by an Arduino, the servo turns an arm to push a ball out of the hopper and into the machine. That’s grabbed by the spinning wheel and flung towards the batsman. By simply adjusting the speed of the angle grinder, the speed and bounce distance of the bowl can be changed. The body of the machine is constructed from simple plywood and is mounted on a tripod. That means you can easily build this machine for less than $100 if you want to hone your cricket batting skills.