Why being left-handed is an advantage at certain elite sports

The study was published in the journal Biology Letters

Left-handed Nadal is the current tennis world number one (Getty)

From Pakistan’s most feared pace bowler in history, Wasim Akram, to baseball’s demon pitcher Sandy Koufax and tennis star Rafael Nadal, sport has no shortage of world-class left-handed players.

But now researchers believe they’ve worked out why there are more lefties represented in some elite sports compared to others.

The journal Biology Letters published a study that suggests that being a lefty is a big advantage in sports which rely heavily on reactions where time pressures are particularly severe, such as table tennis, cricket and baseball.

The reason for this is because right-handers are far more overrepresented and common in all walks of life so their movements are a lot more familiar compared to those of the underrepresented left-handers, thus giving them less time to adjust. This could be a reason for why Mitchell Johnson has had so much success in the Ashes in the past.

“The data suggests that the heavier the time constraints are operating in a sport, the larger the proportion of left-handers,” said Dr Florian Loffing of the University of Oldenburg in Germany, who authored the study. “We are less used to playing lefties, and [so] might end up in not developing the optimal strategies to compete with them.”

It is thought that about 10-13 per cent of the population is left-handed, but in certain interactive sports, it has been noticed that that proportion is significantly, and surprisingly, higher.

To investigate the issue, Dr Loffing gathered the names and handedness of the top 100 or so players in badminton, squash, tennis, table tennis and – in men only – cricket and baseball, between 2009 and 2014.

The results showed that more than 30 per cent of baseball pitchers were left-handed compared to just under 13 per cent for badminton and 8.7 per cent for squash. This coincided with baseball being the highest time pressure sport, followed by cricket and table tennis, thus matching the trend in prevalence of left-handed players in each activity.

Dr Loffing also noted that the study appears to back up the long-supported idea that left-handedness was never lost during evolution as it offers an edge in a fight.