Hot Spot hits a home run

The India-England limited-overs series will not be employing Hot Spot, so the technology’s suppliers have found a different sporting event to pack their cameras off to: Baseball's World Series, due to begin on October 19. The military grade thermal imaging cameras will be used in the USA by broadcaster Fox Sports, on an experimental basis.

“The only reason that we can come over [to the USA] is because we've got spare cameras that aren't now going to India,” Australian Warren Brennan, who supplies the cameras for cricket, told the New Zealand Herald. Baseball, though, is likely to tap the technology’s entertainment potential rather using it to adjudicate the umpires’ decisions.

“A nice big home run off the middle of the bat might come up fantastically well, and the Americans might think that's better than sliced bread,” Brennan said. “It's all about their impression, really. The Americans do tend to look at things more from an entertainment-type perspective of trying to build things up and make things, you know, big and sort of interesting.” Besides, he said, he’s looking to working on baseball as “they’re the sort of clients that we love to work for, that support us 100%”. Wonder what cricket’s top brass would have to say to that?