England's Bazball was buried deep when they arrived in India, as the hosts won the five-match Test series 3-1 with one game remaining. Aside from India's superior home conditions, the ball-tracking component of the Decision Review System (DRS) has caused them the most concern.
After losing the third Test in Rajkot, England captain Ben Stokes said that he wanted the umpire’s call gone from the DRS. His comments garnered mixed reactions from the cricket fraternity. However, the debate intensified after Joe Root’s dismissal in England’s second innings in Ranchi Test.
The incident happened in the 17th over of England’s second innings. Ashwin’s tossed-up delivery on the leg-stump line wrapped Root on the front pad. Umpire Kumara Dharmasena wasn’t convinced as the delivery seemed to be pitching outside the leg stump.
But the Indian team opted for the DRS and ball tracking in the replays showed that a major portion of the ball appeared to be pitching outside the leg-stumped but the technology considered it to be fair enough to rule Root lbw.
Days after the incident, the founder of HawkEye, Paul Hawkins had his say on what transpired in Joe Root’s case. Hawkins explained how technology plays a role in the game of tennis to rule out the ball falling in or out of the line.
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“So, firstly, you measure the width of the stumps on each day. So that then becomes the line between what’s pitched in line and what’s not pitched in line. And it was a very close one. It’s one that in tennis, you will occasionally get a 0 or 0 scenario, and tennis has decided that it’s not out until it’s not 0. Mm, it’s 1. So actually, in tennis, we shift the bounce mark just for a presentation perspective. So, a 0 becomes a 1, so you can clearly see the mark. But that’s just a presentation thing,” Hawkins said on Simon Hughes’ ‘The Analyst’ podcast.
“There’s nothing different with the tracking or the answer. It just makes it clearer to the viewer. It would have been clearer on TV if the track had come off the ball. So you can see the ball more clearly over the line, which happens automatically if the ball has pitched outside leg stump,” he added.
Hawkins also explained that in Root’s case, the ball had pitched 1 mm in the line than out which made the umpires follow the guidelines and rule the England batter out.
“It must be 1 than out because otherwise, we wouldn’t have said it’s pitched in line. But it is a very close one. As per the laws. We’ve given the right answer, but we failed in the ability to not be the story. And perhaps there’s a learning opportunity in terms of our presentation and stuff to make those really close ones slightly clearer,” he concluded.
(News18 inputs)
