Dhoni backs umpires over DRS

[asehgal]

I stopped reading the article the moment I read "100%". Nothing is 100% in life. Are umpiring decisions 100%. I sometimes wonder why our players go out of their way to sound & act like morons.

[BeautifulGame]

New cameras should capture faintest of edges - Hot Spot inventor The inventor of Hot Spot, Warren Brennan, believes his technology can now pick up even the faintest of edges after the development of more sensitive cameras. The BCCI's opposition to the DRS means that the system is not in place for the ongoing Australia-India Test series, but viewers at home are being given access to Hot Spot and Eagle Eye through Channel Nine's coverage. Brennan said the new cameras being used in this series were vastly superior to those that had been part of the DRS in the past. Testing during the Sheffield Shield season revealed the difference between the older cameras and the new ones, with blurring of the ball and marks on the bat no longer an issue. Brennan said faint edges could be seen much more clearly with the new cameras, but a significant investment was required to replace all the old Hot Spot equipment. While Australian TV viewers can see the sharper images of the newer cameras this summer, the third umpire in the South Africa-Sri Lanka Tests, where the DRS is being used, has access only to the older cameras. "We had both cameras down on the boundary line [in the Sheffield Shield], an old one and a new one side by side," Brennan said. "What we found was that the old cameras had so much blur. On the new cameras the ball is completely round, on the old ones there was a lot of motion blur. If we do get a faint edge we will be able to see it. It's just a much more sensitive camera, I'd say five times more sensitive. "I'm confident we will get a much higher proportion of faint edges now. But we're getting a bit sick of putting all the dough up and trying to improve, somebody has got to meet us half way. I would love to throw out my old six cameras and buy six of these new ones so we have eight in total." India's captain MS Dhoni said after the Melbourne Test that he had been a fan of Hot Spot before India's tour of England last year, but he was no longer convinced he could trust the technology. Several appeals during the England-India series went to umpire reviews and Hot Spot showed inconclusive results, which Brennan is confident will no longer be the case with the new cameras. At the MCG last week, Gautam Gambhir and Peter Siddle both fell to faint edges that Brennan believes would not have registered on the old Hot Spot cameras. The new cameras clearly showed a mark on the bat in both cases, although TV viewers initially were shown a replay of the Gambhir dismissal in which the edge was less clear. Brennan said that was due to "sharpening" being turned down on the software; once it was turned up, the edge was visible. Also in the Melbourne Test, Ed Cowan was given out to a caught-behind decision that might have been reviewed had the DRS been in place. Hot Spot showed no mark on the bat and after the innings, Cowan hinted that he was disappointed with the decision. Brennan said he was convinced from the Hot Spot replays that Cowan had not nicked the ball.

[BeautifulGame]

ICC should take control of DRS - Virtual-Eye chief The man behind Virtual Eye ball-tracking has urged the ICC to take control of the DRS and ensure the integrity of the system. Ian Taylor, the CEO of Animation Research, the company that provides Virtual Eye, believes technology can help umpires but that several major issues need to be addressed, from the training of TV officials to an acceptance of what technology can and cannot do. Decision reviews are not being used in the ongoing Test series between Australia and India due to the BCCI's opposition to the system, and Taylor hopes that can be the catalyst for change. Taylor believes the ad hoc nature of the system in its current format is a problem and that strict guidelines need to be enforced to safeguard against human error, technological failure and the misinterpretation of data. "I don't know of any other sporting organisation that would actually hand over the results of a Test, first to a TV company, or secondly to a company that a TV company hires," Taylor told ESPNcricinfo. "The technology has a part to play, but it really needs to be mandated and controlled by the ICC, right down to the people who operate it. You can change the results. Everybody says you can't do it, but you can. Just move it [the camera]. It's possible. "We should be allowed to put our cameras exactly where you want to put them. We went to one place, I won't say where it was, and we put the mounts up and turned up to put our cameras up and they had moved it to somewhere else because someone at the ground decided they didn't want it there. "Nobody takes responsibility for it. For the broadcasters, it's neither here nor there. It's not their deal. They're quite happy to use it but if the ICC wants to use it, it should be mandated that at every ground there are special stands that do not move, that are fixed, that the end-on cameras that we use to overlay everything should be properly mounted." The New Zealand-based Virtual Eye, known in Australia as Eagle Eye, was at the centre of a controversy during last month's Hobart Test, when New Zealand were searching for the final wicket to complete a historic win. Australia's No.11, Nathan Lyon, was given out lbw by the on-field umpire Nigel Llong, but Lyon requested a review, which showed the ball had pitched a millimetre outside leg stump, and the decision was overturned. To the naked eye, the ball appeared to clearly pitch in line with leg stump, despite Eagle Eye's assessment. However, Taylor said that was due to the positioning of the super slow-motion camera, which was not completely square on with the pitch, while he was confident in the Eagle Eye footage as his camera was in the best possible position to judge where the ball had pitched. "One of the rules that the ICC put in was that over 50% of the ball has to be [pitching in line]," Taylor said. "It did hit in line, but our positioning of it was 49% was in line - it was a millimetre. So then you come to the next question, which is if this DRS is only there to do the howlers ... that is not a howler. Our view was it [the umpire's decision of out] should have stood. "The umpires are sanctioned by the ICC, paid by the ICC, trained by the ICC, yet one of my guys could have overturned their decision and changed the result of the entire series. He's not paid by the ICC, he's not trained by the ICC ... I still love the idea that the umpire has the last say in everything. Our job is to give them the tools they need to do that really, really quickly." Taylor believes a key part of the success of the DRS surrounds proper training of TV umpires, who should be comprehensively schooled in how the technology works. He said officials on the elite panel should not automatically be assumed to be the best men to review decisions on a TV screen, and that the third umpire's role should become a specialist position. Under Taylor's plan, part of that training would involve umpires being shown situations in which the technology is less accurate, such as when cameras are blocked by bats, legs or fielders. The more cameras that can track the ball, the more accurate the projection is likely to be, but Taylor said it was important umpires, players and viewers understood that there would be times technology could not be relied upon. "They use technology and they still put missiles down the wrong chimney," he said. "I think it's absolutely critical that we are able to say, not enough data. There's an algorithm we can put in that goes from red to green, which gives you the scale [of accuracy]. If it's in the green zone, don't argue with it. If it's in orange, maybe take another look at it. If it's in red, don't even think about it, don't use it. The public sitting on the other side should know that and understand it. "Tracking these balls at 250 frames a second is a huge leap forward. But there are still places and times where we should have the power to say 'actually, we didn't get enough data, umpire's call stands'. But nobody wants to hear that. Everybody wants to believe that it's flawless 100% of the time. That's a big call on any technology.