It is 2003. A gloomy day in Gabba. Jason Gillespie was on his elements. Rahul Dravid edged to slip and made it too gloomy for all Indian fans. As usual all the hopes were pinned on enigma of 1 billion people, SACHIN TENDULKAR. Jason Gillespie steamed in and bowled a normal length delivery which was easily going over the stumps. For the sake of appealing, Australian slip cordon and Jason appealed. Sachin knew it very well that the ball is going over and he also prepared himself for the next ball. Suddenly, the Australian camp was elated with high fives everywhere and Sachin was stranded in crease with the peak of despair, disarray, disappointment.
Reason:
Umpire raised his finger and he was adjudged LBW.
Sachin was gone for a 3 ball duck. Indian camp was entirely in misery mode. Fans in India who woke with the help of early alarm to see their heartbeat’s batting went back to sombre mode and slept.
Guess who the umpire was. STEVE BUCKNOR. Perfect party spoiler.
After Sachin’s dismissal, the comm box fumed because of Bucknor’s nasty decision. Replays clearly showed that the ball was hitting high on the back pad. Then the ball tracker was showing that the ball clearly was going above stumps.
As a kid we always wondered why we can’t implement that technology in real time to save batter or to help a bowler which can easily help to change the course of the match in both ways for any team.
Sachin nearly missed 15-20 centuries because of nasty and poor umpire decisions. Just imagine, how many more centuries he would have scored if he had the help of technology. Our Little Master very rarely lost his poise and demeanour.
Turn the clock back to the present mode. The cricketing world took gigantic leaps towards implementation of technology in the game. ICC started to use Hotspot, Ultra edge and ball tracker even in bilateral series.
DRS and Indian Cricket:
During India’s tour of Sri Lanka in July 2008, this DRS technology was initiated. Out of 12 overturned decisions only one favoured India. Virender Sehwag’s LBW was overturned. Initially it was referred as UDRS system. The system was officially introduced in Tests in November 2009. In September 2013, the rules were tweaked to allow teams to reset their review counts after 80 overs. In 2016, the criteria were changed to widen the frame of contact between ball and stump in lbw out decisions.
BCCI was always reluctant on using DRS due to the mistrust of the ball tracking technology for LBW mode dismissal. They said the path predicted after the ball hitting the pad was not reliable. Anil Kumble was one of the crucial reasons for BCCI’s acceptance of DRS. Before joining as Indian team coach in 2016, he worked as Head of ICC technical committee. Geoff Allardice and representatives from Hawkeye (ball tracking technology provider like virtual eye) met BCCI officials and Anil Kumble in Delhi before the India – England test series in 2016. With the help of top gun engineers from the field intelligence unit at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they presented the independent assessment of technologies involved in DRS and also, they explained the evolution of ball tracking in last 2 years. As a result, BCCI finally agreed to use DRS on test series as trial basis.
Cameras with higher frame rate were used. Three parameters were needed for an LBW decision:
pitching of the ball, impact point on pad and predicted path towards the stumps.
The accuracy of that path prediction depends on the number of frames captured (frame rate between ball pitching and the impact). Currently frame rate of Hawkeye’s camera is about 340 frames per second. During 2011 world cup they recorded around 50-75 frames per second. Higher frame rate provides more accuracy that means there will be lot of frames (information) available for the prediction.
When judging the point where the ball hits the pad, a key factor is to make sure the ball has not changed path. The BCCI had said there was more potential for operator error while identifying the point of impact. BCCI was reluctant because of that grey spot. In order to solve that, hawk-eye created Ultra edge to identify the point precisely. It is a sound-based edge detection system which identifies the frame in which ball hits pad or bat. It also records every data of the delivery.
In Cast Away movie, when Tom Hanks found a dead body of pilot in the shores, he collects every useful object from him. His foot got severely affected and he was without shoes. After removing the shoes from pilot’s foot, he checked that size which was lesser than his size. So, he peeled off the front portion and worn that with his toes coming out, because he had no other options left. Like that, players also changed their technique after the arrival of DRS. They started to use their bat a lot and reduced their pad usage. Started to play in front of pad. Several stats saying that Indian batsmen game went downhill vs spin, this change in technique to survive against DRS is also the part of the reason. Players don’t have the sophistication of Rocky Bhai of KGF. He wittily told that he doesn’t need to crouch his legs, instead of that he can raise the size of mat. Our players followed footprints of Cast Away’s Tom Hanks.
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The interesting aspect of this game is not only players need to adapt for different playing conditions but the broadcasters and boards also need to identify the proper technology for their conditions.
One such difference is the type of technology used in different parts of the world. It is just fascinating how the technology has developed over the years. Though it has made our lives simpler, it sometimes makes it that much harder to make a decision.
While watching the series between India and Australia, you must have noticed the usage of hotspot and might have wondered why is it that different parts of the world use different technologies to come to the same conclusions. India does not allow hotspot is that it is a military form of technology (i.e) infrared technology, so the Indian government does not permit its usage.
In addition, the BCCI and the Indian broadcasting channels have been reluctant to use it, not only because it is not necessarily more accurate than the snickometer. Instead, it is even more expensive. Hotspot requires two infrared cameras positioned at either ends of the ground, above the field of play that are continuously recording the images. They sense and measure heat from friction generated by a collision, such as ball on pad, ball on bat, ball on ground or ball on glove.
Any suspected nick or bat/pad event can be verified by examining the infrared image, which usually shows a bright spot where contact friction from the ball has elevated the local temperature. Using a subtraction technique, a series of black-and-white negative frames is generated into a computer, precisely localising the ball's point of contact.
When it comes to the snickometer, it is slightly outdated as it captures all the noise in the stadium, and that's why you see it flickering about all the time because of background noise.
Ultra-Edge on the other hand is nearly accurate and precise, it responds only when it detects noise within certain frequency adjacent to the bat and it is easier to identify whether there is a nick or not.
Both snickometer and the ultra-edge often produce inconclusive results indicating contact (potentially any combination of bat, pad, feet shuffling, bat handle squeak) whereas the hotspot exactly shows where the ball strikes.
Independent testing has shown snickometer and other competing sound-based technologies are susceptible to the concept of the "phantom snick", where the sound of the ball whooshing past the bat sometimes creates a sound, even when the ball does not touch the bat.
We should make use of the technology as much as possible, but it should only aid human and not by substituting him. If that happens it will dominate us like TRANSFORMERS world.
TECHNOLOGIES IN OTHER COUNTRIES:
There are 2 different ball-tracking technologies used globally. Most countries use the Hawk eye technology whereas primarily, the Aussies use the Virtual eye, which is a New Zealand based company.
Hawk-Eye is a camera system which traces the ball's trajectory during the game. It is also an advanced officiating tool used in sport, used across many sports. Hawk-Eye uses 6 high speed specialist vision processing cameras which are positioned around the ground and calibrated. In addition the system uses the two “Mat” broadcast cameras and calibrates them so that the graphic is always overlaid in the right place. All cameras have “anti wobble” software to deal with camera movement. Broadcasters and technical team will combine all the camera frames and measures 3D and 4D positioning of the ball. Also it consists of two elements such as delivery to bounce and bounce to impact. They calculate swing, deviation, pace, dip, flight through measuring the position of ball at multiple frames for that delivery. The future path is predicted with the help of ball’s flight up to impact.
The Hawk-Eye System comprises of two main elements: a Tracking System and a Video Replay System. The Video Replay System offers the optional component of a high-speed and accurate camera, which might provide more in-depth biomechanical analysis and interpretation.
Virtual Eye approach has always been that technology which should be used to enhance viewer comprehension of a sport, and to deliver viewpoints that television cameras cannot.
Even Virtual eye captures more frames to assist broadcasters. Virtual eye manually fine tunes the point on the trajectory where interception with the batsman was made. Automatically the system is only able to determine the interception point to the nearest frame of Hawk-Eye video running at 106 frames per second. This can be improved manually and is the only way to ensure that the interception point is accurate to 5mm. At 106 frames per second, Hawk Eye would have picked up a maximum of 4 positions and would not have been guaranteed of capturing the actual impact point.
Virtual eye is the most accurate and Australians using that. But that is costlier.
Turn back the clock to high octane 2011 WC semi-finals between arch-rivals India and Pakistan. Saeed Ajmal came to bowl immediately after powerplay. He bowled a quicker off break and Sachin unrealistically played across the line, ball hits on his pads. Akmal and Ajmal immediately raised their decibels and umpire Ian Gould raised his finger without delay. Crowd went mute and few thrown back their 1000 walas over the loft. Whole Mohali MCA stadium was on disbelief. Felt like a battlefield after war. After consulting with ever pumped Gambhir, little master opted for DRS. Fans were glued to tv sets.
Waiting for the ball tracking…
Ball pitching : Outside off : Red
Impact : On the stumps : Red.
Wickets: Missing : Green
School kids on their way to home after writing their board exams screamed on roads, dancing everywhere while watching their demi god survive to carry their hopes for one last time. 1000 walas were back. Soldiers on border were celebrating with tears of joy. Sachin started to take guard again.
Even on his not so greatest days, Sachin topped run charts for us. Scored scratchy match winning 85 off 115 balls. Mohali was in glitterati mode and full of supernovas. Thanks to some philanthropic fielding from Pakistan fielders, India won the match and qualified for finals. Sachin’s match winning knock was the prime catalyst for that. On that day entire India thanked this wonderful technology DRS. From Gabba – Mohali, this paradigm shift happened and our demi-god passionately chasing his dream of winning world cup which he won few days later.
Even after winning 2011 world cup and 2013 Champions trophy (DRS was used in both), BCCI was adamant at that point to use DRS and very lately adopted it. The road from Gabba – Mohali was full of emotions, heartbreaks and hope-less. But that’s what the sport is all about. Our players went from that scintillating point and broke all mammoth barriers to granules.
Sometimes it will hit us hard, like Dean Elgar’s reprieve in Newlands test. It’s a double-edged sword. But in the war, soldier should go only with hopes on his skills irrespective of the opponent, field and their troops. That’s the way our brand of cricket should be. DRS will be a catalyst without a doubt.
Competition between Hawk-eye and Virtual-eye is helluva worthy. It makes cricketing world as ever - improving and adding new essence to the game. Technology keeps evolving with dexterity and velocity like Max Verstappen in Monaco Grand Prix. Embrace it and evolve with it.
