The Chirp About Cricket Ball Technology

The most talked about cricket technology today is ball tracking technology and the Decision Review System (DRS). Though introduced in late 2009, this past Monday (1 Aug) the ICC (International Cricket Council) unanimously agreed to recommend all Tests and one-day internationals be played with DRS.

The purpose of this technology is to allow each team the opportunity to request up to two unsuccessful review calls per inning during a match. Batting teams may use the review to challenge an ‘out’ call while fielding teams may debate ‘not out’ calls. According to DSR rules, only bad calls can be reversed, and if it is too close to call, the original call on the field stands. There are further regulations to these basic rules, which can be viewed here.

Unlike a review in baseball (left or right of the foul pole) or in football (multiple camera angels to catch the point of tackle) getting a clear picture of high speed play in cricket requires more complex technology. Below is a description of the technology from A Cricketing View blog:

Ball Tracking technology involves the use of multiple synchronized, high frame-rate video cameras to capture the path of the cricket ball from the point of delivery to the point of impact on bat or pad. These synchronized videos are then transferred to a calibrated 3D Virtual World of the cricket pitch. The cricket ball is located in the 3D space of the virtual world in each frame of video. The path of the cricket ball is reconstructed by putting together all these available frames. The basic data that are produced by this procedure is a position for the cricket ball at regular intervals of time (the frame rate). These data are then used to calculate what forces act of the cricket ball at any point in time, based on which the position of the ball at the next point in time can be calculated. This is a basic outline of how the ball track and the prediction of where the ball was heading if the pad was absent are produced.

This technology is not without controversy. The top vendor of ball tracking tech is up for debate, as is the product reliability. Also, similarly to the goal-line debate in soccer, purists argue ball tracking and DRS undermine the authority of the on-field umpires. Personally my knowledge of cricket does not extend much past eye-wear. However I wanted to cover this topic because the technology is interesting and complex and (as with most sports) peppered with controversy. Ref. cricketingview.blogspot.com, espnstar.com, wikipedia.org Pic ref: espnstar.com