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The use of technology in cricket, part 17
By Will last year, at the end of December, 3 Comments »
And so the dreaded decision review system is back. It’s matured enough to be own its own acronym, DRS, but not enough to quell the doubters such as me, nor more eloquent observers of the game: Mike Atherton.
Those who would wish to watch the relentless march of perfectionism — the ultimate endgame of professionalism — should ask themselves what watching sport without human error would be like. And to those who say that if sport is worth playing, then it is worth playing properly, I would simply quote Gideon Haigh, occasionally of this parish: “When cricket is thought to be too important to be left to mere humans, then it is in danger of mattering too much to be enjoyed.”
Cricket has lost something rare and precious and it was not what Collingwood or those in thrall to automated perfectionism were searching for.
The entire article deserves your attention, even if you’re in favour of the relentless march towards isolating the on-field umpires in pursuit of apparent perfection. Such a notion, as Atherton points out, is entirely false in a breed of entertainment which thrives on risk and chance and derring do and bravery such as sport.
What saddens me most with technology in cricket, apart from the speed with which it has changed the sport in the past ten years, is understanding who it is supposed to benefit. It isn’t the spectators, on TV or at the ground. It might once have been to protect the on-field umpires, but has instead stripped them of the powers bestowed on them by the laws of the game. Their word was once final, but not any longer. So what purpose – other than counting to six; stretching their arms horizontally and vertically; occasionally standing on one leg; drawing an imaginary TV screen in the shape of a square or helping to calm angry players – do they now serve?
The impact has so far been that more players – fractionally more, because the reviews are limited in number – are receiving the correct decision, and near-total justice has been achieved. But the system isn’t yet (and won’t be for years, if ever) foolproof enough to ever allow officials to be 100% certain about each decision, which makes you wonder why we ever went down this path in the first place. Well, it ought not make us wonder. We know who runs the game, and it’s certainly not the ICC.
Since when did sport, a mere game – harmless folly between one human being and another – become in need of a judicial system thereby ostracising the very people it was invented to help entertain?
3 Comments »Poor technology hampers cricket
By Will 2 years ago, mid-July, 9 Comments »
Michael Vaughan dives to catch Hashim Amla. Or did he? (© Getty Images)
I really want technology to work in cricket, for it to help umpires, and avoid those unnecessary delays. But today highlighted just why no current technology can really be trusted to confirm or correct an umpire’s decision.
There were two incidents, one from each team. Andrew Strauss edged to AB de Villiers at third slip, who dived across and claimed a catch low to his right. Very low. One glance at the slow-mo replay – that is all it took – confirmed the ball had bounced well before de Villiers, and even when the ball made it into his hands, he was not in control of it. It was simply not out, despite his and all the other South Africans’ insistence. Strauss stood his ground and the replay clearly confirmed he was right to do so. I’ve no problem with de Villiers claiming the catch. It’s his duty, and if he felt he caught it, fine.
The second incident is trickier. Hashim Amla fended off a brute of a bouncer from Andrew Flintoff, the ball ballooning tantalisingly in front of Michael Vaughan. Amazingly, for someone with only half a knee, he made a terrific effort to reach the ball, diving in front of him and apparently scooping it up with his fingertips before it hit the ground. He immediately celebrated, whooping with delight, and it looked a clear winner.
Amla headed off, but his coach and captain gesticulated for him to stay, prompting the use of a replay which couldn’t confirm whether Vaughan’s catch was clean or not. From one angle, it looked like he had got his fingers underneath it and it never touched the grass. From another, you couldn’t see the ends of his fingers, so the ball appeared to be grounded. In short, it was inconclusive and Amla was allowed to stay. It could be a decision that defines the series should Amla go on to score a hundred.
Technology ought to be helping cricket, but at the moment we’re stuck in this awful halfway house. The players aren’t sure. The umpires are frightened that their errors will be exposed, and understandably refer it to the television official. But when that last line of defence is so utterly indecisive, the biggest losers are the players and the public for having to wait several minutes for a non-decision. It’s utterly crap.
I have no solution to this. We will have to wait another decade or more for technology to improve, but I’m sure it will. Eventually, I can see the day where all players are wired up, their fingers acting as remote sensors for a television official. When players’ hands touch the ball, it’ll send a signal; perhaps the ball’s own shape could be monitored, signalling to the umpire when it’s touched the ground. Maybe it’ll turn automatically turn green if it’s not-out, or explode for a player who continually abuses the referral system.
Who bloody knows. Maybe we’re asking too much of technology. It works almost flawlessly in tennis, but cricket is far more complex. Many more players on a much larger outfield (of varying sizes and shapes) makes it so hard for science and technology to monitor things…tennis is reliant on the lines on the court and sensors on the nets, and hawkeye has made that process brilliantly slick.
There’s no chance we’ll ever revert to players walking, accepting fielders’ puppy-eyed nodding that they took the catch. So what exactly is the solution until technology catches up?
9 Comments »MCC go pink
By Will 2 years ago, mid-April, 6 Comments »
You’ve got to hand it to MCC. For so long they were the stuffy uncle of cricket: custodians of the laws of a noble sport, and with the detached arrogance to match such an honour. Their image has changed irrevocably in the past 15 years – just look at Lord’s for proof. It combines the old with the new like no other ground in the country (if not the world), and continues to break new ground. They’re now looking to utilise the tunnels beneath the nursery which once housed trains on the old tube line.
And today they unveiled a new pink ball as a potential replacement for the grubby white one which becomes so discoloured in ODIs. Yes, pink. It’s not as garish as it sounds and, on such a gloomy day at Lord’s, it was certainly luminous against the lush green turf. I’m not convinced it was any more visible than the old white one, but it appears MCC’s task is to find one more durable, not necessarily more visible.
Anyway. The chap tasked with all this is Dr Anthony Bull, a bioengineer from Imperial College, who was good enough to spare me and a couple of other reporters the time at Lord’s to explain a few things. More interesting than all the pink balls (honk honk, etc) was his opinion of the future potential of bat technology. He is convinced that within the current constraints of ICC regulations, the current bats can be improved so that a ball will travel a further 20% than they do at the moment.
That is quite some revelation and the impact on the game could be extraordinary. Mis-hits could go for six, or flashing nicks for six. Where on earth would this leave the poor bowler? Such a super-bat would give batsmen yet another unfair advantage over their opponents, and increase expectation on television suits to finish games even sooner than they currently do. Boundaries have been steadily creeping in from the fence in the past ten years – an absolute and unrecorded farce if you ask me – for that very reason: to get “result” games in order to lure bigger audiences to TV.
Anyway, we’re some way off ever seeing this super bat. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts. Would you be in favour of such a technological advance, or does it belittle the already hapless bowler to a mere support act?
More on Dr Bull and the pink balls at Cricinfo.
6 Comments »Why can’t we rate fielding?
By Jonathan Liew 2 years ago, at the start of March, 6 Comments »
Musing over how Wally Hammond might have handled running around the boundary to cut off a Misbah-ul-Haq shovel sweep got me thinking about fielding.
We’re often told that unlike batting and bowling, fielding and wicket-keeping can’t be expressed in simple numbers. Great wicket-keepers, we’re told, drop catches others wouldn’t even reach. Pietersen (6 foot 4) can stop balls Bell (5 foot 10) can’t. How can you measure boundary saves? Or run-outs? Or fumbles?
Well, why can’t we?
In football, Prozone tracks every movement of a player throughout the game, with and without the ball. Similarly, The Times’s ‘Fink Tank’ logs every touch a player makes and from that deduces the value of that player to the team’s performance. In cricket, we have all the ingredients we need to perform the same calculations.
Take catches, for example. Hawkeye can measure how far a fielder was from the bat at the time the ball was hit, the speed the ball was travelling and how far the fielder had to move to catch the ball. Factor in the player’s height, and that’s pretty much all you need. Sit a couple of mathematicians in a room with a couple of biomechanics experts and you can come up with a formula. Not a perfect formula, obviously, but a start.
Apply a similar system to ground fielding and you should be able to work out when fielders should, on average, be cutting off twos. You could then factor in distance from the stumps and angle with the stumps to compare direct-hit run-outs.
It’s not going to be easy, but imagine the benefits of having a reliable measure by which to compare fielders with each other. It will revolutionise the game. Such a measure will never, of course, be truly objective, but it’s a darn sight better (no pun intended) than the naked eye, which is what we’ve been relying on so far.
So if there are any mathematicians reading this who fancy a project, do get cracking. It took 34 years for cricket to come up with a reliable formula to calculate a rain-adjusted target. With the technology in place, surely we can do better this time.
6 Comments »Pietersen c Sangakkara b Vaas 1
By Will 3 years ago, mid-December, 6 Comments »
Oh how simple it sounds.
Pietersen c Sangakkara b Vaas 1
Alas, it is anything but – and the media (yes, I know I’m part of it, but I can still comment) might be making a meal of it in the coming 24 hours. For those of you who didn’t see it, this is what happened:
| 60.3 | Vaas to Pietersen, OUT, and the plan has worked, it’s a brilliant piece of work at slip, but wait, there’s controversy. Pietersen went for a drive at a wide ball, nicked to the third slip, Silva, who dived to his left and grabbed the catch low to the turf, it bobbles up and Sangakkara comes from first slip to take the rebound. Pietersen waits as the umpires consult, Harper raises his finger, but TV replays show the ball appears to have brushed the ground before the initial take by Silva. Pietersen waits inside the boundary, as he did at Lord’s earlier this year against India, but there’s no overturning this decision and he’s off |
Clarification from Andrew Miller:
The difference between the two incidents is that at Lord’s there wasn’t an original agreement between the umpires on Dhoni’s catch, it was given immediately by Simon Taufel. However, in Colombo the umpires conferred before deciding Pietersen was out and the laws state that the third official can only be used if the view of the on-field umpires is obstructed.
This is clearly bullshit and the law needs amending immediately. Like many, I still hanker after the good old days when video replays were rare and pretty inconclusive, but cricket must move with the times and we can’t have this middle-ground where technology is used sparingly. It’s making the sport look pretty damn stupid.
Your thoughts? Vote on the right-hand-side of the site, too.
Loading ...Notes from the pavilion for November 4th
By Will 3 years ago, at the start of November, No Comments; be the first!
Links of note from the past 24 hours:
- Cricket Mystery – A new site from John Morrison, the former New Zealand batsman
- All Blacks failure should sound alarm bells in cricket as well – Interesting piece from John Morrison attacking modern analysis
‘Mollycoddled’ players can’t think for themselves
By Will 3 years ago, at the start of November, 2 Comments »
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There was a piece in the New Zealand press which I Surfered yesterday in which Nathan Astle revealed the “brain washing” he and his team-mates have been experiencing, or whatever the term is.
This is the much-trumpeted forum that as told in Nathan Astle’s just released autobiography includes a session in which each player has to leave the room while the rest of side break into groups and dream up adjectives to best describe him, and a few things they believe he should try to brush up on.Apparently the brainchild of a former Australian school teacher, the supposed aim is to improve the relationship-dynamics between the players, therefore imbuing the squad with a greater sense of trust and, as a consequence, helping to achieve more success on the playing field. That’s the aim, anyway.
And today John Morrison, the former New Zealand batsman, has joined in the debate – even arguing that in terms of “over analysis,” the New Zealand cricket team is heading in the same direction as the All Blacks. He raises some important points:
“I’m always worried when I go to a ground and see cricket coaches poring over laptops but the problem is, now if you say anything to the contrary you’re called old and out of touch.
So instead we’ve created this industry of extras around the team who have to justify their existence by taking any decisions or responsibilities away from the players.
“So we’ve got this mollycoddled generation of sportsmen who might be great athletes but who have lost all ability to think for themselves.
All this (for me, anyway) ties nicely into Giles Clarke’s comments the other day, in which he said “cricket is a business”. And it is. Cricket (and many other top-level sports) is no longer about the players, or even the sport itself. The game has become an incidental extra to the serious business of making money. Now, Morrison’s comments aren’t directly linked to this – but the constant over-use of technology, inspection and analysis isn’t helping anyone, and is another needless obsession away from the actual game itself. As he says, these players are all supreme athletes, but what do they have to show for it?
And what is the solution?
2 Comments »Technology of covering and following cricket
By Will 4 years ago, mid-December, 3 Comments »
Technology has moved on massively even in the short time I’ve followed the game. Back then, in the familiar gloom of the 1990s, few people bothered with Sky. It required a “dish” which implied a small and unobtrusive space-age work of genius. In fact, they were the size of a small car and were concreted onto the sides of flats which almost collapsed under the weight. They were also bright white, or they were until the pigeons took aim.
All change. The dishes are now properly unobtrusive – digital, even – and are sucked onto the walls of every estate in Britain. And here is the BBC’s Test Match Special producer, Caroline, with their own version.
I miss the old days sometimes. Ceefax, waiting for the colours to change (not out batsmen were in white, I think, and those dismissed turned green. Appropriately.) Can’t remember what blue meant. But there was a thrill in watching the screen, if the radio was knackered, waiting for it to change. And there was usually (but not always) a delay in updates if a wicket had fallen…so you’d sit there, sweaty palmed, and wait for the batsman to turn green.
This was all before Cricinfo came along. Now that we’re doing ball-by-ball commentary editorially – with more of a voice, colour, interesting facts etc – the response has been incredible. We even get emails from fishermen at sea…in the middle of the bloody sea, reading our website and following commentary. It’s ridiculous.
So I don’t miss the old days that much. There is too much cricket being played; the game is played at a new, frenetic pace (except when Collingwood’s batting); Zimbabwe are, well, whatever. But the coverage, and access of cricket news for the fans, is unprecedentedly broad. It’s pretty damn good.
What do you miss from the dark old black-and-white (or white and green) days and what modern marvels do you like the most?
3 Comments »I say, is that willow metal?
By Will 4 years ago, at the end of March, 4 Comments »
This has been rumbling on for nearly a year and has finally reached a conclusion. The end of the graphite bat is nigh. I first mentioned this back in April last year yet it’s taken that long for the authorities to remove their thumbs from……well, it’s sorted now. In actual fact, Kookaburra have withdrawn the bat themselves “voluntarily”. More at Cricinfo, of course.
Ricky Ponting is the bat’s most high-profile user. Given his extraordinary form in the past year or two, it’ll be interesting to see if a change in bat brings a change of luck…I doubt it, somehow.
4 Comments »Bob Woolmer speaks about the use of technology
By Will 5 years ago, at the end of October, 10 Comments »
We initially were wary that a certain Bob Woolmer had emailed in – but sure enough, it was he, and he wrote a very interesting response on our new blog, Wicket to Wicket, about the use of technology in aiding umpiring. Check it out.
10 Comments »Cricinfo’s Wicket to Wicket part deux
By Will 5 years ago, mid-October, 2 Comments »
Cricinfo’s new blog Wicket to Wicket, as mentioned yesterday, looks pretty promising. I like the idea of having a debate, and allowing the senior writers free-reign to offer their opinions. Looks like it will work pretty well. As ever, if you have any thoughts on it, leave a comment and I’ll pass them on. The debate this week is the use of technology and TV to aid umpiring, following the experiments in the recent Super(flous) Series (TM Dileep).
2 Comments »Ponting’s bat gets the ok
By Will 5 years ago, mid-May, No Comments; be the first!
Ricky Ponting can use his metal-blade-of-a-bat which caused a bit of a hoo-har a few weeks back.
Are we seeing the end of the traditional noise of leather on willow, to be replaced by the rather less poetic sounding “Leather on Graphite”? Somehow lacks the romance conjured by the words leather and willow!
No Comments »Mickey-Mouse cricket gets substitutes
By Will 5 years ago, mid-May, 3 Comments »
ODI cricket might soon have substitute players brought on, ala Football and Rugby, as early as June. Not impressed, at all – this just dums down cricket even further, more mickey-mouse bullshit. More here
Also:
It may not seem like it, but international umpires make the right decision almost 95 per cent of the time. But in an attempt to avoid the odd mistake it has been proposed that, during the three one-day games and a Test match in Australia, the umpires be allowed to refer decisions they are unsure about to the third umpire.
How long before umpires are replaced completely?
3 Comments »Proposal for electronic chips in cricket balls
By Will 5 years ago, at the end of February, 12 Comments »
I heard today that the FA are trialling an Adidas ball with an embedded microchip inside. When the ball crosses the goal line, it immediately alerts the referee – so it got me thinking: why can’t we use this in cricket? Obviously, the technology of creating a cricket ball versus a football is vastly different – but surely the effort would be worthwhile in the end.
This would give umpires one less thing to worry about. These days, the pressure on them is astronomical – any questionable decision (and there appear to be dozens per game nowadays) is shown on The Big Screen, and x thousands cricket fans display their vocal opinion (of the umpire: not necessarily the decision…).
This technology, to the armchair pundit like me, sounds perfectly doable. And it could even be expanded upon. A microchip with collision-detection: this could do away with video evidence (or rather, the sole use of video evidence) for questionable catches, the chip emitting a signal to the 3rd umpire. So they could better decide whether a ball had carried or not.
We can’t escape the use of technology in Cricket. All the new “advances” – hawkeye, the red-line for LB’s, super-double-special-wicked-slowmo and so on. Let’s help the umpires instead of undermining the decisions they make. Perhaps I’ll ask Daryl Harper to comment…
12 Comments »