Hawk-Eye founder Paul Hawkins has criticized Michael Vaughan for the former England player's comment on the technology following Joe Root's controversial dismissal in Ranchi Test against India. During the guests' second innings, a Ravichandran Ashwin delivery crashed into Root's path but the umpire was unconvinced by the LBW shout. India went for an assessment. Although it looked like most of the ball was thrown outside the leg stump, the technology deemed this fair and it was given out. Some pundits and fans were not happy with the decision with Vaughan asking for more transparency in the system so that viewers also get to see what happens during the tracking process to “put the noise to bed”.
Hawkins revealed in a recent interaction how Hawk-Eye technology actually works during a Decision Review System (DRS) and the measures taken to maintain transparency and minimize errors.
“Every day the guys go out and measure the width of the stumps. And so that is fed into the system. So you work based on the actual width of those stumps… So you calibrate the system for the environment that it there is,” the technology founder said on The Analyst podcast.
“A good process that has evolved in terms of quality control is there's a van camera, which is more of an internal process, that keeps people off their phones. But the best thing in terms of quality control is an automatic screenshot of The tracking system is taken over and that automatically goes to the ICC. So even though it's never broadcast, because there's a lot of intellectual property in those screenshots for the internal quality control for the people who have to make sure that the technology providers are providing accurate answers, that's all done,” he added.
Hawkins in particular also responded to Vaughan's suggestion, criticizing the ex-player's “unfortunate” opinion.
“The commentary is, I think, a bit uneducated. It's a shame for Vaughan because he was obviously a fantastic player, he really enjoyed watching him play and was a great commentator, very entertaining. But I think it's is a responsibility to the players.” Perhaps a little more preparation in terms of his role as a journalist could help him explain what is happening to cricket's huge fan base so that what he writes is factually correct. In the same way that Hawk-Eye has a duty to be factually correct, perhaps journalists do too,” Hawkins said.
Topics mentioned in this article