Consciousness- Active or passive?

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We claim that we have an active consciousness as our actions are spontaneous and willed where as other life forms posses only passive or reactionary consciousness. Let us examine how far this assumption is true. Consciousness is something which science has not understood fully in the sense that we know some of its properties but we don’t know what it is made of or how it creates experiences. In the case of humans and animals we have found that it is the brain that gives rise to consciousness. But it is difficult to experiment with a live human brain as it will be an inhuman act and since animals cannot communicate with us there is no way we can know their feelings. This probably is one of the reasons why we could not make much progress in the study of consciousness. But Sir Roger Penrose the renowned physicist is one scientist who has made an attempt to understand the nature of consciousness and human mind. In one of his books he describes some experiments done by neuro-surgeons during brain surgery on humans (with their permission) and the results are really startling. Conscious awareness of an event occurs about half a second after the actual event but we always feel our perception is spontaneous. That means that the time we perceive or feel is actually delayed by half a second from the actual time of occurrence but we are tricked by our consciousness to believe that they were simultaneous. Then our reaction to that event takes about 1 to1 ½ seconds from perception to action. If that is the case how are we able to play cricket or other games? The batsman would get clean bowled by the first ball. Not only in cricket, we would get clean bowled from life itself pretty fast. But it does not happen in reality; why??