Use of Techonolgy in Cricket - II : Hawk Eye

First of all I would like to welcome the decision by Simon Taufel to refer the first Kevin Peterson dismissal in the Lords test to the third umpire after giving it out himself. You need to be courageous to put your decision on the line in front of TV cameras. Kudos to Simon Taufel for that.

 

Coming back to our topic of discussion, about the use of technology in cricket for aiding umpiring decisions. I will discuss about Hawk Eye here. Hawk Eye, probably one of the most revolutionary cricket technologies in its time, has also been marred with a lot of controversies. While it has been used extensively by broadcasters to liven up the viewing of cricket, its use as an aid to umpires has been long debated. Infact it has been used in the Wimbledon for decision making, and was also involved in a controversy there. Roger Federer was clearly not happy with the technology being used in the 2007 final against Rafael Nadal (in reference to a line call that was called IN). We have often heard a lot of objections to using the Hawk Eye in cricket officially. A lot of those objections are invalid, and made by either ex players or commentators who have not gone and looked how it actually works. Hawk eye uses the same technology as used for missile tracking. It records the trajectory of the ball at various intervals, using cameras that are far more sophisticated than the cameras used for TV broadcast, as explained in this article. The same applies to the Hawk Eye cameras used in Wimbledon, where the normal TV cameras record 150 frames per second, cameras used in Hawk Eye record 1000 frames per second, thereby recording the trajectory more closely than can be viewed on TV. Hawk eye officials have refuted Roger Federer’s objection here, and stated that the hawk eye decision was not ‘definitely wrong’. This clearly shows how powerful the cameras are, and how they capture stuff that naked eye finds difficult to do. More data about hawk eye is available on its site http://www.hawkeyeinnovations.co.uk/

 

Coming back to the point, these cameras track the trajectory of the ball before and after pitching, and extrapolate the data to find the path of the ball. The common objections are that it cannot extrapolate how the ball moves in the air, and off the pitch. Both are wrong, to an extent. It can capture what the ball does off the pitch, since it tracks the trajectory before and after pitching. Hence any movement off the pitch will result in that being captured. Swing in the air is the more difficult thing to capture, but so is it for the umpire. I would rather have the umpire’s judgements being based on the technology instead of his own whims and fancies. It can do whatever a naked eye can do, with more accuracy.

 

The bigger objection is that it may replace umpires. I do not know why. Since the beginning it has been said that it should be used as an aid for the umpires, rather than a substitute for the umpires. The final decision has to be made by the umpire. Atleast you can rule out some of those howlers where the umpires miss balls hitting the middle stump. Or at the very least, use it as an aid in deciding whether the ball pitches in line with the stumps. (Though to be very frank, I do not understand this rule of cricket too. If the ball pitches 1 cm outside leg stump, and the batsman pads at it, and it is hitting middle stump, why should that be not out?)

 

If the objection is that the matches would be over far earlier, I think we need to give something here to the bowlers as well. Otherwise, very soon we will have teams playing with 8-9 batsmen, since the rules would anyway not allow bowlers to be of any use. Why make the game longer at the expense of a bowler who has rightly caught a batsman plumb in front? Or if you want the game to be really long, remove this controversial mode of dismissal all together. Lets not have LBWs.

 

I think we need to realize, that the more technology advances, the more it will be used in broadcast, and the more the umpires will be exposed. This is a way of bringing consistency in the game and their decisions. And it is far more accurate than human eye. We have started using the Third Umpire for run-outs and even catches. And that has not replaced the umpires. On the contrary, it has added a lot more fun and zing to the game. Why not use this as well? The umpires will be far more relieved, and if big match stress has anything to do with incorrect decisions, this will also be avoided once they are empowered with technology.