During the recently held Sydney Test between Australia and India, an incident related to Decision Review System (DRS) left everyone shocked.
The episode happened during the 12th over of Australia's second innings, bowled by Ravichandran Ashwin.
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The Indian off-spinner managed to beat Steve Smith after the latter tried to go for a slog-sweep but missed the ball completely. The delivery was found to be just clipping the leg stump after the visiting team went upstairs, believing that they have got Smith's wicket.
Smith survived because of the umpire's call but what triggered a controversy was the flawed ball tracking. In the replays, a fourth stump had appeared 'mysteriously' on the screen.
Two weeks after the incident, the operators of DRS have acknowledged the mistake.
"We reported that immediately to the people we work with at the ICC because it was a mistake on our part -- fortunately it did not affect the decision, the umpire was correct, but is should not have happened. We take full responsibility for that but the important thing was that the decision to stay with the umpires call was the correct one -- the real ball track did show the ball missed," Ian Taylor, the MD of Virtual Eye that operates DRS in Australia and New Zealand, said in an exclusive chat with Cricbuzz.
Taylor further elaborated why such a gaffe happened during the marquee series.
"We tracked the ball normally in our tracking system and it showed it missing the stumps. For the DRS the next step is to play the ball track back, superimposed over the 'end on' broadcast TV camera when the 3rd umpire calls for it. At the start of play we calibrate the two TV cameras at each end of the pitch to ensure they are perfectly aligned when we play our ball track over the live camera. When we did that, before going to air, it was fine and the ball was clearly missing,” he stated.
"Just before we were going to replay, the end-on camera lost focus for an instant and when that happens it loses its calibration and we have to recalibrate. It happens a few times during the day but this was the first time it had ever happened between the time we tracked the ball and the time we had to replay it.
"Our operator went through the recalibration programme to realign the camera -- he thought he had successfully done that but as soon as he replayed the video with the track on it, he realised that it hadn't recalibrated correctly because the ball was now clipping the stump rather than missing it.
"It was human error on our part. Fortunately, the error was within the 'umpires call' margin so the result stood -- as it should have, because the ball in our track was missing the stumps. It is perhaps a good example of why there is an umpires call margin -- it is for occasions when the technology might make a mistake. This time it wasn't technology -- it was a human error which we take responsibility for. To put that in context -- on any given Test we track over 2,000 balls without an issue," he explained.
Commenting on the fourth stump and the off-stump being outside of the pitch map, Taylor said: "There is a virtual 3D pitch that is usually perfectly aligned with the real pitch. Then the calibration went out, that meant the two worlds were no longer aligned properly, so you could see that the virtual stumps were no longer matching the real stumps. So, to summarise, there are three virtual stumps in our tracking model that you never see because they are aligned perfectly with the real ones. On this occasion, because we lost the calibration, you could see them separately."
Coming to the series, India won it 2-1 after losing the first Test in Adelaide. While the visitors won the Boxing Test by 8 wickets at MCG, they pulled off a stunning chase on the final day at the Gabba to clinch the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
(Inputs from Cricbuzz)
