The scorecard says
Marsh c Pant b Ashwin 9, Australia 5-208
Nobody except Rishab Pant really appealed as the ball seemed to beat the outside edge of Mitch Marsh’s bat today in Adelaide and even Pant was kind of half-arsed about it and Ravi Ashwin couldn’t really seem to care less until the umpire raised the dreaded finger and Marsh turned and made the long trudge back to the pavilion.
Cue the replay sequence that inevitably will always follow a wicket.
Cue my WhatsApp and the massive three-person group of myself and my two best mates back in Australia screaming, “Why didn’t Marsh review it? He clearly didn’t hit it because Snicko said he didn’t and the super-slow showed a gap between bat and ball.”
“Marsh hit it, mate, that’s why he walked.”
“No, he didn’t and the replays showed he didn’t”.
My calm logical explanation to my two mates was thus.
“Marsh hit it; he didn’t want to burn a review; he knew he hit it so he walked, however, not for the first time and not for the last time, Snicko was wrong. Marnus and Smith would have reviewed it and they would have got away with one because Snicko is a bit shit.”
My mate’s reply made perfect sense.
“Well, the slow mo showed a gap between bat and ball.”
“Yes, it did but sometimes, not often but sometimes, that camera will skip frames. It’s not ideal and DRS should not be abolished as a result, but shit happens. I would trust a super slow camera over Snicko every day.”
“That’s why we hate watching sport with you.”
Television sports production and the people who are responsible for what you see love a gimmick. I’m talking the suits, not the crew but the corporates and the producers, and as a by-product of this there are a lot of companies out there who are looking at creating the next thing that TV execs will fawn over.
Some of these things are brilliant like Hawkeye and Hot Spot.
I remember when Hawkeye first came on the scene and to say it was ridiculed would be an understatement.
A batsman fell LBW and a replay sequence would be rolled followed at the end by Hawkeye.
CLIPPING LEG, IS IT BOYS??!! Would be screamed out in a control room most likely by the director whilst everyone else would chuckle away at the Hawkeye kid’s expense.
Make no mistake, Hawkeye is full of kids. Smart kids, posh kids going to university, to study numbers and whatever it is that smart posh kids from the UK study.
They were and are a particular kind, they get paid bugger all compared to your camera guys, audio and EVS (replays and highlights) as well as most of the other crew that make live sport on TV happen.
And for the early days they were given a pretty hard time because they were looked at as a gimmick.
However, to be fair, a hard time was buying rounds in the hotel bar and heckled on air behind the scenes. Pretty much most of them were great kids and they were also pretty good at weeding out and getting rid of the wankers and, let’s face it, some 20 to 23-year-olds can be right wankers, so some you never saw again but then some of them have been responsible and at the coal face of Hawkeye evolving into what it is now.
I rate Hawkeye massively. I see the hard work especially on the cricket that they put in and I’ve seen it become a valuable part of a production. If Hawkeye says it’s clipping leg, I have no question that it is.
Snicko has never really taken that step.
There have been times where eyes are rolled. It has become a huge part of cricket broadcasting but it can be and has been far from 100% accurate.
I don’t want to shit can it overly but it is not perfect.
I’ve been asked a few times today, why isn’t Hotspot used for DRS?
Apparently, it’s a money thing.
Broadcasters didn’t want to stump up is what I’ve heard but there is more to it than that.
Hotspot is only shown on Australian TV whereas if a series goes down the DRS road and most do, unless Ireland are at home to Afghanistan for example there is a protocol.
Check the front foot, show a front on replay preferably a super slow-motion camera then, use Snicko, allow Hawkeye time to make sure that ball tracking is 100% ready and then show that.
You can’t have Snicko show no edge and then, after the decision has been made, show Hotspot about 4 balls later which contradicts it.
Just like when you show replays of a catch from certain angles that are taken upstairs to make a decision – you can’t show another replay one over later that contradicts what the 3rd umpire has been shown.
My opinion, for what its worth, is that the ICC should pay for DRS and not broadcasters. It makes it all a bit mickey mouse when better tech gets overlooked because it costs more for broadcasters to use.
The ICC decided that DRS would be a part of how cricket is adjudicated, not broadcasters, so they should foot the bill.
The BCCI used to get a hell of a time for refusing to use DRS in the early days and the reason was simple. The Umpires Word Is Final – that’s cricket and technology makes mistakes so we are happy to trust the umpire because their decision is final.
Eventually, and they don’t do it often, the BCCI caved.
Snicko relies on audio more than pictures but Hot Spot, with its negatives, relies on infra-red cameras.
Broadcasters get excited by all sorts of dumb shit.
Fox Sports love showing a ball by ball over from an overhead camera. They call it ‘the flying fox’ or something naff like that. Why?
It never ever shows where the ball pitches so who cares what the batter’s footwork is. Without seeing where the ball pitched their footwork is totally irrelevant, it’s just some pointless dross that tells the viewer nothing.
Ball by ball analysis used to be done by us replay monkeys and it made sense,
The down the line camera was used.You saw where the ball pitched and how the batter responded. Hawkeye does it better now ’cause they can incorporate graphics and are more accurate with where the ball pitched.
Commentators used to ask me to build analysis packages. Now I and others who do my job get bypassed because Hawkeye can show it more analytically which is fine, I’m cool with that (I used to hate it, to be fair).
Every year at various sports broadcasts there is some new toy that needs to be jammed into the coverage because it has been paid for and it doesn’t come cheap.
Some is cool, some is just wank.
At the end of the day there have been countless examples of tech getting things wrong. Nobody really wants to admit it but it does happen.
Mitch Marsh edged that ball today, and he knew it, so he didn’t bother going upstairs and the tech got it wrong.
The scorecard says
Marsh c Pant b Ashwin 9, Australia 5-208.
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About James Woodroffe
Born and raised in Victoria now in the U.K. with my English wife and son. Somehow fell into the world of rolling slow motion replays almost 25 years ago which has given me a life I could never have dreamed possible. Recently decided to follow my other passion writing about sport as I close in on a half century. Cricket and Aussie Rules tragic, rock n roll nerd Collingwood nuffy.
Illuminating take and it makes sense.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Good stuff
Very informative. Behind the scenes stuff that tells us how the cake is baked. I’d go back to umpires decisions for everything except run outs and stumping. The advantage of technology is only getting rid of home town decisions, by requiring objective confirmation. It has turned umpires into mobile hat stands.