Lillee: gadgets are 'insult to one's intelligence'

While many are calling for an increase in the use of technology to assist umpires, Dennis Lillee has slammed the way that television coverage has taken on board some of the devices. He is particularly incensed by "Hawkeye", a system used to predict where a ball which hits a batsman's pads would have travelled.

"I have no problems with technology that assists in helping umpires adjudicate correctly on run-outs and stumpings, but I am afraid Hawkeye and his mate, the Snickometer, are pure gadgetry," Lillee wrote in his column for the Geelong Advertiser. "Some of Channel Nine's graphics regarding where the ball supposedly lands and travels after it bounces are an insult to one's intelligence.

"Hawkeye is purely a guide for armchair buffs, yet it seems a hell of a lot of experienced commentators take it as the be-all and end-all. Blokes with that experience -- and most of them are former Test captains -- know full well that every ball does not continue through at the predicted height.

"From a fast bowler's perspective, there is no way Hawkeye can tell if a delivery is going to skid a bit more than normal or hit a crack, or a damp or worn patch, or a bit of grass on the wicket. Batsmen struggle with the unpredictability of bounce, so how on earth is Hawkeye going to know what every ball is going to do, how it comes out of the hand or is angled?"

Lillee's comments come in the aftermath of the leg-before decision given by Steve Bucknor against Sachin Tendulkar in the first Test at Brisbane. Bucknor was roundly condemned for what many pundits thought was a dreadful decision, but Lillee thinks otherwise. "When I first saw Jason Gillespie thump the ball into Tendulkar's pads my immediate thought was 'He's out'," Lillee wrote. "I found the hullabaloo surrounding Tendulkar's dismissal quite disturbing."