“I don’t really know the answers, but there has to be a way to try and improve it somehow,” said Australia captain Pat Cummins. This, on the camera angles at play for third umpires to adjudicate low catches. The recently concluded Australia-South Africa series had seen multiple close calls go upstairs followed by decisions that were made without sufficient proof. With grey area on whether the fielder had caught the ball cleanly, without it making any contact with the ground or not.
Cummins mulled after the Sydney Test, “I think as it currently stands, it’s really hard to give a batter out. If there’s any kind of benefit of the doubt it goes his way. I think with a couple of camera angles really slow down it’s pretty hard to not find doubt somewhere.”
So, is there a scope for more, better camera angles to come into play? Can the technology have another upgrade to help the umpire better spot if there’s a gap between the fingers when the ball is caught? 3D cameras? Ball sensor technology? Live cricket director and broadcast consultant, Hemant Buch feels otherwise.
“Cricket runs on a lot of technology as it stands. The technology is pretty expensive, and not every board can afford to invest in it. This is why you find different camera specifications in different countries. Some productions have 3 times the number of cameras others do,” he tells The Indian Express.
Buch, who has worked in cricket broadcasting for over two decades, further elaborates on the financial headache for broadcasters and cricket boards pertaining to tech advancements.
“Traditionally, the cost of technology (while used for decision making by ICC umpires) has been borne by broadcasters. Sometimes this has been covered by sponsorship, other times, it has been borne by the broadcaster in order to improve the quality of production. But again, very few broadcasters or boards make money out of enhancements, so it would be tough to do across the cricketing world. Unless of course, someone such as the ICC bears the cost via a universal sponsor.”
Buch reckons there are a few necessary questions that need to be asked before thinking of investing in any cricket tech for resolving the aforementioned.
Does this technology exist? Is it foolproof? If it does, Is it worth spending vast amounts of money for very few contentious decisions?
Let’s take ball-sensor technology. In March 2020, leading ball manufacturing company, Kookaburra had introduced ‘SmartBall’, embedded with a microchip to relay real time data on whether a bat has definitively nicked a ball, whether the ball has hit the grass on low catches, and improved tracking for DRS.
“If it boils down to one company manufacturing balls with sensors (as has been suggested), what happens to other ball manufacturers? What happens when the ball goes out of shape or its seam splits and you have to change it? How do you manage to find so many old balls with sensors?”
Buch further adds, “Also, how does it compute the clean catch? If a blade of grass touches the ball between the fingers, is it a drop? Is it a catch? Or does it need to be on the ground fully? “I fear it will create more problems than solve.”
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