Technophiles anonymous

Remember the technology trial held during the ICC Champions Trophy in Colombo last year? There was an impression that the experiment to allow on-field officials to call on the television umpire for help whenever they wanted was a failure. After all, the ICC soon announced that the trial would not be extended to the World Cup.

However, a confidential report into it - produced by David Richardson, the ICC's general manager of cricket, and Chris Kelly, the umpires and referees manager - shows that the majority of international umpires, referees, captains and television directors involved thought the increased use of technology was an overall success.

These people were asked to answer a questionnaire and all but two captains - Nasser Hussain of England and Carl Hooper of West Indies - replied. "The vast majority of replies indicated that there was a role for technology in the game, that the procedures were effective and that the benefits outweighed the few difficulties that arose," the report stated.

For the purposes of the trial, umpires were permitted to call on the television umpire for help on matters of fact (not opinion) not previously within their remit. In practice this enabled them to request assistance with lbw decisions (had the ball pitched in line with the stumps? Did ball strike bat first?) and thin nicks to the keeper. These new cases produced exactly half of the 60 referrals during the 15-match tournament, the others relating to the traditional and non-contentious issues of run-outs and stumpings.

What the trial showed was that technology was very little help in determining whether a batsman had indeed made contact in cases of suspected faint edges: out of eight consultations, replays offered conclusive evidence that the batsman had hit the ball in only one instance.

The biggest success came in determining whether the ball had pitched outside leg stump. This was the cause of the commonest request (nine cases) and was easily verified by the TV umpire. Spin vision technology - the camera which follows the ball down the pitch - was also valuable in deciding whether ball had struck bat before pad in lbw cases.

Both these aspects scored highly in perhaps the most interesting section in the report in which the authors awarded an effectiveness rating to each area of referral. Why the ICC allowed the authors this licence is a moot point, given that it barred the TV umpire from relating his opinions to his on-field colleagues and banished Hawk-Eye from the Colombo experiment as impure technology - much to the ire of the ball-tracker's creator, Paul Hawkins.

The ability of television replays to provide conclusive evidence was marked at 10 out of 10 for balls pitching outside leg, bump-balls and run-outs, stumpings and boundary decisions. On whether the ball hit bat before pad and whether the ball hit body rather than bat before going on to be caught, it received 9 out of 10.

More dubious, said the authors, was the success of TV replays in determining other issues relating to lbw decisions - whether the ball would have gone over the stumps (5 out of 10) and whether it hit pad outside the line (4 out of 10). The problem in both cases, they said, was knowing the precise moment ball hit pad. Hawk-Eye might have told them the answer, had they been willing to ask it. Also scoring low were the feathered edge to the keeper (2 out of 10) and bat-pad catches (3 out of 10), replay pictures proving frustratingly inconclusive in both cases.

However, the whole debate took an unexpected twist when it transpired during the ICC's annual meeting in London that white lines connecting the two sets of stumps would be trialled in certain, unspecified practice and domestic matches as an aid to umpires. A report on this trial's success would be put before the ICC's Cricket Committee - Playing before any decision was made to introduce it into international cricket but the white-lines option is plainly a threat to the expansion of technology.

The report expressed satisfaction with the time taken over referrals - less than 50 seconds on average for run-outs and stumpings, 66 seconds for lbws and 76 seconds for catches. The ICC fought shy of extending technology's role at the World Cup not because the Colombo experiment failed but because the processes remained unproven. The ICC Champions Trophy in England in September 2004 presents an ideal opportunity for a further trial.