Friday, August 12, 2005
Technology in sport
The Michael Kasprowitz’s “not out”, which secured an England win in the Second Test, has once again raised the profile of technology in the adjudication of sporting decisions.

Kasper had battled miraculously with Brett Lee to come within three runs of defeating England and going a long way to retaining the Ashes. But agonisingly for Australians he was given out caught behind. High-tech slow motion replays from three dozen angles, reveal that the umpires decision was incorrect. On its way through the ball did strike his glove, but his hand was not holding his bat: Not Out.

Australians shouldn’t be too distraught however, as that same replay technology showed that Kasprowitz was clearly out LBW, some three overs prior.

The Edgbaston Test will down as one of the great Ashes battles, but nevertheless it was marred by a number of incorrect umpire decisions, mainly, it must be said, from Billy Bowden. Would technology have made the result easier to accept? In retrospect, it’s impossible to say.

Generally, sports governing bodies have accepted new technologies, aimed at improving the quality of key decisions, in a pragmatic fashion. Tennis adopted Hawkeye in the late 1980s to adjudicate on serve and whether the ball – sometimes travelling at 250kp/h – has landed within the service box. Rugby (both codes) now defer to TV replays to check the ball is correctly grounded in a try situation and to help post-match inquiries into player conduct. Even old fuddy-duddy cricket has allowed TV replays to adjudicate on close run outs.

TV technology has revealed the finest arts of cricketing skill. Hawkeye systems now track the speed and trajectory of every single delivery in a game. Clever overlay tricks can make a batsman disappear on screen in order to judge whether the ball has struck him plumb LBW. The ‘snick-o-meter’ listens for faintest of edges and now, ultra-motion cameras can pick out minute adjustments in direction of the spin of a ball on its way passed the bat – a tell-tale sign of a fine edge to the keeper.

Modern camera work has opened up a parallel world of slow motion cricket that has benefited player’s coaching regimes and enthralled enthusiasts. We can now see the most subtle details of the phenomenal skills of Warne’s leg spin or McGrath’s upright seam.

This parallel world is then shattered when the Channel 4 production team run the ‘real-time replays’. Umpires must see everything: where the bowlers' front foot lands, the line through which the batsman plays the ball, how far forward or back is his crease he is, any swing of the ball in the air or seam off the pitch and the height of the bounce. This is all before the batsman has played at the ball. This takes approximately 0.4 seconds. Perhaps it is most amazing that umpires get it more right than wrong.

But this also demonstrates how beneficial deferring to technology’s superior and more multitudinous eyes and ears could become. The introduction of new technologies into sports adjudication seems inevitable, particularly as the money staked on the game becomes more pressing. Technology has the potential to reduce uncertainty in decision making by a big factor.
But rapid technological advancement means it will always be ten steps ahead of any implementation. There will always be a requirement for careful consideration before its introduction and so therefore its deployment will never be state-of-the-art.

In considering its roll out, the following must be taken into account as a bare minimum:

• When responsibility for adjudication is deferred to a third party managing the technology, what are the implications of the reduced status of and respect for the umpire/referee on the field of play?
• Technology based decisions should never impede the players nor unduly interfere with the flow of the game. Already, decisions on ball groundings in rugby and run outs in cricket impact on the spontaneity of the game, where it can be delayed up to 2-3 minutes, awaiting a decision.
• How will the introduction of a technology affect the game at grass-roots level, or in poorer countries at the top level? Too much technological wizardry at the top has the potential to destroy the simple accessibility of sport and development of a sporting ethos at the bottom. Accepting uncertainty can be a mark of personal development.

And nevertheless even technology has its limits, as highlighted by Ian Bell’s dismissal in England’s second innings at Edgbaston: adjudged caught behind off Shane Warne.

In replay from the front angle, it looked inconclusive, though suggestive. The snick-o-metre however, did not record a sound and the ultra-motion camera couldn’t reveal a nick or a change in the ball’s spin rotation. Yet the rear view camera picked up a definite deflection in the angle of the bat as the ball went passed, clearly indicating an edge.

These four pieces of evidence did not all point to the same conclusion. They would have left a third umpire again weighing up evidence from different ‘sensory’ sources, just as the man in the middle uses all his senses in making a decision. (Probably even including ‘softer’ senses, such as intuition, in judging the batsmen’s physical reaction - betraying his emotional reaction - to a particular shot.)

Limitations aside, technology will continue to steadily intrude into sports adjudication. In the meantime, umpires and referees understand that their skill and conduct are increasingly under the technological microscope. But this should only serve to drive up standards in their abilities and further limit injustices.

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