This article has been publish on “The Roar” as well
This has been a controversial issue
throughout the Ashes. There is a caught behind decision that is referred to the
DRS system. Hotspot shows nothing, but there is audio and the batsman are given
out. Every time this has occurred there has been controversy with many people
arguing that if hotspot shows nothing then the batsman shouldn’t be given out.
However, I disagree with that
argument and I support the use of audio in the DRS system.
The reason is that throughout the
history of Test cricket, on-field umpires have used a combination of sound and
watching any deviation as a guide to dismissed batsman for caught behind
decisions. There are many times throughout history where we see batsman being
dismissed by on-field umpires based on sound alone for thin edges without any
controversy. Long before hotspot was
invented, commentators would often judge the accuracy of the umpire’s decision
on whether they can hear a sound during the replay.
Considering that hotspot is known
to have ‘false negatives’, audio should be used to assess whether the batsman
has edge or not. If we used the argument
that decision needs a mark to show on hotspot to dismissed the batsman, then we
might as well tell the on-field umpire not to used sound of an edge to dismiss
batsman as well. That they should only
give a batsman out if they see deviation caused by an edge and therefore only
thick edges would ever be given out in cricket. I doubt many people would accept that umpiring
standard in cricket especially when people argue that cricket is too batsman
friendly already. It’s a bit hypocritical to demand on-field umpires to hear
edges when making a decision whilst at the same time demanding third umpires to
ignore sound.
There are a few people who argued
that audio can be unreliable as it can hear sound unrelated to the edge like
the squeaking of the glove. However,
I’ll argue that same standard could be applied to ignore any sound of the edge
by the on-field umpire and hence ignore any audible edge as the audio in the
DRS just shows what the umpire hears in the stump microphone. The stump
microphones picks up what is going on the field and the chance that out of all
the time the glove squeaks just at the moment the ball passes the bat is
unlikely. We have to say that on the basis on probability it is far more likely
the sound is caused by an edge if the bat is far away from the pad or the
ground. Also umpires can listen to the
audio and make the judgment call on whether the audio sounds like a nick.
Now people may wonder that if audio
of a nick is given a greater weighting than a blank hotspot then what’s the
point of hotspot?
The issue with audio is that it has
‘false positives’ especially when there are issue of bat on pad or ball on pad
or bat on ground and it’s difficult to determine what is the source of the
sound in the audio. Hotspot can be used
to help determine whether there was a ball on bat impact in those scenarios
where audio is unreliable.
I’m hoping that snickometer will
eventually be incorporated into DRS. The reason why snickometer is not used in
DRS is not necessarily due to inaccuracy but the slowness of the process of
getting snicko available to the umpire in a timely manner. Right now
snickometer requires a technician to manually sync up the audio from the stump
microphone with the video footage and this can take minutes to prepare and
since the synchronisation is done manually by a technician it is possible that
human error and inconsistency could occur if the technician makes a mistake.
A timely review system requires
information in a few seconds and also requires consistent synchronization of
audio and video and that isn’t good enough. However reports are that Alan Plaskett has developed a system called ‘Real Time
Snicko’ or RTS, which is an automated system that could produce a snicko-type
result within 5-10 seconds which will solve that issue.
There have been calls to introduce RTS
to be incorporated in the DRS system and hopefully it will be ready for the
Ashes in the Australian summer. The
combination of RTS and Hotspot will assist the umpire in making the correct
decision for thin edges and in my opinion would improve the game.
