James Vince straps on his pads and gloves, and takes guard at the Waca. He knows what to expect: a barrage of deliveries from Australia’s pace trio that are nasty, brutish and short, helped along by the Fremantle Doctor.

Except, in this instance, Vince is not at the Waca. Instead, he is thousands of miles away preparing for the Ashes by facing the same bowlers, on the same pitches, as he would have done in Australia.

Unfortunately for England, such a scenario was not a genuine possibility before they got on the plane to Australia – this time. It is a tantalising portrait of the future – virtual reality training, one of the next frontiers in modern sport. Virtual reality is already transforming how sport is watched. Now, it could transform how professional sport is played, too. Imagine how better prepared England’s top order could have been for the Australian quicks at every Ashes Test ground.

At the end of the summer, the England and Wales Cricket Board visited Queen’s University Belfast to see professor Cathy Craig, one of the world leaders in VR sports technology, for a trial of her VR headsets. A few days earlier, I visited her laboratory in Belfast for a glimpse of VR’s beguiling possibilities.

As I learned when subjected to a barrage of bouncers from around the wicket, VR is already a tool to hone reaction times and experience what it is like to come up against quick bowling. Within a few years, the headsets should enable batsmen to face any international bowler – rather than just generic ones – and their full array of variations, captured from TV cameras, with batting movements and timing on the VR system perfectly aligned with facing the real bowlers. There will even be accompanying crowd noise.

Tim Wigmore bats while wearing a virtual reality headset. Photograph: Courtesy of Queen’s University Belfast

The technology, which has already undergone a trial with Irish first-class players, is a “potentially transformative tool for batsmen if the hardware can develop,” Raph Brandon, the ECB’s head of science, says. “The theory is excellent. We understand what the performance potential is.”

Batsmen have an inherent physiological advantage over bowlers: they can train for far longer without becoming fatigued. But because bowlers must be managed assiduously, batsmen spend much of their time in the nets against bowlers of a far lower standard. VR could change that: rather than facing less-skilled bowlers, batsmen could be challenged by the best in the world. That could be especially useful in preparing for rare types of bowlers – such as express pace or leg spin.

Many of the same benefits were promised with bowling machines such as Merlyn, which uses holograms of international bowlers, but VR is far more sophisticated. Merlyn’s bowlers have no run-up and batsmen know the exact point from which the ball will be released – the black mark – so there is no way of deciphering variations. However, with VR, bowlers shape up in 3D exactly as they do in matches, so batsmen can train themselves to a bowler’s visual cues – their wrist movement, for example – to work out what kind of delivery they are likely to receive. VR involves watching a bowler – in exactly the same way as in a match – not a machine, only without the risk of getting hurt.

VR developed by professor Cathy Craig is also being embraced by Ulster Rugby

“VR could allow increased learning in a safe environment against dangerous short-pitched fast bowling – a 14-year-old could face a virtual Mark Wood,” Brandon explains. “You could have academy batsmen facing a pre-programmed elite level of fast bowling and wrist spin over and over again.” This would allow young players to develop their anticipatory skills and experience against the best bowling. The motion sensors, measuring how and when a batsman decides to act, could also accelerate player development by giving players more understanding of their batting, and improve talent identification by seeing how young players’ reaction times measure up against leading batsmen.

Professionals, meanwhile, could use VR to harness their skills in the most audacious and dangerous shots – going down on one knee to ramp a 90mph delivery from Pat Cummins, say, but without any danger of incurring physical harm. And England’s batting selection dilemmas could be resolved in a novel way. Rather than fret that county cricket does not expose batsmen to enough hostile pace, candidates for England’s top five could be presented with an identical bowling spell – Mitchell Johnson in Adelaide in 2013, say, or Cummins under the lights in this series – and judged on how they play it: the ultimate selection shootout.

VR involves watching a bowler, in exactly the same way as in a match, not a machine, only without the risk of getting hurt. Photograph: Courtesy of Queen’s University Belfast

Yet perhaps the most significant impact of VR technology could be during the games. If Lasith Malinga was bowling with his slingshot action, the next man in could prepare by batting with a VR headset and full kit against a virtual Malinga in the dugout, both training to face such a unique bowler and readying themselves for their innings.

“It blew me away,” says Paul Nixon, the former England wicketkeeper and now the new head coach at Leicestershire. “Your eyes are a muscle and it strengthens them.” Batsmen using VR while preparing to bat would, he believes, be helped to attack “from ball one”. As with batsmen enjoying better-quality training, and demystifying unusual bowlers, it points to how VR could alter the balance between bat and ball in T20 cricket, contributing to scores becoming even higher. The possibilities are already exciting those at the top levels of the game.