Umpire’s call…To “tech” it or not to take it?
The article talks about why it is easy to judge an umpire but not easy to judge as an umpire, and role of technology in cricket
Over the years, cricket has gone through huge transformations. In trying to make the game better, ICC has tried so many things — some like powerplays have become an indispensible part of the game, while others like — supersub has been forgotten for good. The effort has always been to make the game more interesting but at the same time, keep the playing field fair to all aspects of the game.
Umpiring, in cricket remains a very underappreciated aspect. With the introduction of technology, a lot of things have changed. Snicko, Hawkeye, Ultraedge, Hotspot, multiple camera angles, improved zoom capabilities, all have significantly changed the game. But every now and then, this reliance on tech has been questioned.
So is the technology used in cricket reliable?
Like every other technology, in sports as well, there is a small fraction of tolerance required and that is where human intervention becomes important. I think that is why a role of third umpire is very important and simply cannot be automated. But then there have been issues like, applying Vaseline or any liquid petroleum on a bat, which beats the hotspot and goes undetected. Well, the aim of technology and its involvement is to make the game more fair than what is possible without it. So has the number of howlers, been reduced? Definitely. Does the player has an opportunity to challenge or check an umpire’s decision? Yes he has.
So technology cannot introduce a moral compass in the game. The virtue of sportsmanship does that. Good schooling, good caoching, good captains, good leaders, good mentors do that.
The love for the game comes naturally and trying to find a loophole in the laws or finding ways to beat technology, is just like cheating on your beloved. It is downright unacceptable. The truth is, there will always be some way to find fallacy in any tech — if you go looking, you will find it.
So the question is what makes a technology good enough to be used?
Often we see hotspot and Snicko showing, different results. Sometimes a side on camera angle feels that the bat is on the line, while from stump cam it seems that the batsman has made his ground. Often, we see bat and pad being so closed to the ball at the same time that it is very difficult to even judge that even with the technology available. So when the technology In such cases is not good enough, then why to have it.
The point is same, having an additional aid doesn’t cause any trouble. But the absence of aid might cause that. Maybe a very obvious dismissal might have been adjudged not out, because humans err. So at least you can filter some of those, if not all. So, clearly if there is some technical aid that help the umpire, why not make use of it. Even if it solves the matter 5 out of 10 times, at least that’s 5 pickles less off an umpire’s plate.
The idea, however should be for the same five cases, the decision/result/inference drawn from the use of technology, should be reliable and consistent. A hawkeye cannot show ball hitting stump for a delivery, and if you replay it, it misses the stumps. Reliability is a product, system, or service will perform its intended function adequately for a specified period of time, or will operate in a defined environment without failure. When operating in a defined environment should give, similar results for a chosen set of factors, irrespective of the number of times the process is run, and that is consistency. If a hotspot fulfills these two prereuisites, it is good enough, if a Snicko gives me. reliable and consistent results, we should use it.
The cases where it is so complicated, the presence of technology opens the world up to debate, where people see the decision as per their bias. So do we blame the technology for the opinion of people, for this debate? An Indian will always feel Virat hadn’t knicked it — it was pad first, an English will feel Archer had just done enough to get the faint edge off the bat first. This will exist in some form or other.
It might be over umpiring decisions today, tomorrow it will be over something else, maybe a pitch, maybe a venue, maybe fixtures. There is a very common human tendency, to find flaws in exterior to the locus of control and such factors can be easy targets.
“Oh, had the number of boundaries rule not existed then, Newzealand could have won the ICC 2019 world cup. That rule took the game way from Newzealand.”
The outcome could have been different had there been a super over. The rule wasn’t a good decider either, no denying that and hence has been changed for good. But the thing is when Newzealand were running for the second run, on that ball, every player knew that rule, the equation for them was never to tie the match, so all in all it might have been a bad choice for a decider, but it wasn’t unfair.
When we think about so many things in that match, the overthrow that hit Stokes bat, had that been a throw at the other end, or had that been a throw that was flat and directly on top of the stump, the story would be different. Had Boult not stepped on the boundary rope, while the catch was taken, the story would be different.
There are innumerable choices/faults we make in a game that affects final outcome. It might seem that it is technology or the rules or the umpires to be blamed for, but it will never be a justified argument.
All that sounds fine, but how can umpire’s call be justified at all? I mean come on, the ball is hitting the stump, what else do you want?
This is a valid question and has been raised by the greats of the game as well.
“I just don’t understand the umpire’s call… If the ball is hitting the wickets (in case of an lbw appeal), it has to be out,” Warne had said while commentating, in the recent India vs Australia test series.
Later Tendulkar, in a video, had also questioned, “I am not convinced with the DRS rule at all. Once you have gone upstairs to the third umpire then the on-field umpire’s decision should not come into the picture at all”.
To understand why an umpire’s call is in place, there is a need to understand Hawk-eye based ball tracking. Usually a cricket stadium needs to have a minimum 6–7 high definition, high speed camers at the underroofs or stands, to have slightly raised perspective of the cricket ground and the delivery under consideration. The area of play of captured in very fast successive frames, in multiple angles — which helps in detemining the factors(line, length, ball speed, spin on the ball) for the probable play ahead after the impact with the batsman. In each frame sent from each camera, the hawkeye identifies a certain set of pixels which corresponds to the image of the ball. With every frame, the position of the ball by is compared to images recieved from the multiple camera angles, and would require at least 3 positions to overlap and generate a ball tracking position — trainagulation of actual data sets. Subsquently, these actual data dets, builds up a record of the path along which the ball has travelled and after impact, and the data analysis so far, generates the future path, and the interaction with wickets ahead.
So it all sounds, good so where is the margin of error. Well, the hawkeye team has specified that the ball tracking is accurate upto ±3.6mm. The diameter of the cricket ball is 71.3 to 72.9 mm. So that margin is just, 5% or lesser!
All this is not making any sense, then why do we even consider 50% of the ball to hit the stumps or while pitching on the surface?
Of course the tolerance or the accuracy of the system itself is very good, but even then, the factors surrounding the area of play in cricket are very varied. More varied is the way a ball can behave in interaction with these factors. Often we have seen a ball bouncing differently pitching on the same length. Often we have seen balls turning differently, landing on the same rough. Even though the swing on the ball is one of the factors in predicting the flight, but even these factors have their individual small levels of inaccuracies.
Hawk-Eye may struggle with predicting the trajectory of a cricket ball after bouncing: the time between a ball bouncing and striking the batsman may be too short to generate the three frames (at least) needed to plot a curve accurately, summing up all the factors. In all such cases, a lot of these folds are ironed out solely on the basis of data analysis and stats, which isn’t the worse way, but is it 100% accurate, well can it ever be.
So what ICC did is, lets take those decisions or consider those ball areas or impacts that we can be absolutely sure about. So 50% ball surface, is that buffer number, ICC felt most comfortable with. The debate being can we increase this to say 75% or more, for that the hawkeye needs to become more reliable and consistent and take into account certain non-tangibles — like the unevenness of a pitch, the swing of a ball, the miracle of roughs on spin friendly tracks. Can we do that,currently? No sir, we cannot. In the future we might, but then there would be something else to debate about.
Okay, but what about the catch of Surya on his debut? For god’s sake that ball had hit the ground! That was a sure umpiring error.
There are two aspects to that incident. One is what umpire could have done, and the other what the game allows the umpire to do. The umpire had given a soft signal as out and had signalled for a review. The third umpire had viewed it from different camera angles, couldn’t find conclusive evidence to overturn the on field decision. Had the soft signal been not out, there wouldn’t have been any conclusive evidence to overturn that either. As the essence of DRS goes, when there is no clear evidence, the on field decision will stand.
The cricticism that comes here is, how can an umpire standing at the center of the pitch, be a judge for the action happening 50–60mtrs away from him, maybe under lights, maybe with a cluttered background of audiences, maybe with a blocked view all together. In such catches, the batsman always has the look of disbelief, the bowler and the fielding side is always convinces that the catch was clean. The fielder, often just shrugs and says, he doesn’t know. So when an umpire is unsure of the nick to a wicketkeeper, a lot of times, it is the reaction of batsman, keepers, infield catchers that are taken as a tell, the body language aids them in making the decision. But in case of an outfield catch, the body language is never going to help. So what does he do?
The game doesn’t allow the on field umpire to let go a catching decision, without a soft signal. The argument here, and what Virat thought as well, was that why can’t the umpire have a say like, he doesn’t know. Then the onus would be on the third umpire to give a decision, and just like a runout, he would at least have more resources to aid his decision as close they might be. Now that is a fair demand, and something ICC might look into.
The technology use will definitely improve with time. With that, the game will keep getting more fair. But can we be sure, that by then we wouldn’t have a found a new target for our blames. Technology has been criticised for more wrong reasons, then the right ones, and then it is not perfect. But it is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t have a perfect solution yet. So we need to hold our horses, and should not subject Umpires and their decisions to constant criticism or subjugation. The game is never lost by just one decision, if you failed while chasing a 200+ target, the bowlers didn’t do well, if you lost while defending 140 runs, you might have wanted to bat better. So yes the umpiring decisions are game changers, but so are the skill of the players — 22 who play the game against the three who umpire.
