HomeTechnology in Cricket Hawk-eye and the slower bowlers byMurtaza Moiz -August 24, 2010 0 Hawk-eye may be good for pace bowlers but for spinners who turn the ball? Pacers may get the close to 100% But can it predict actual speed and bounce off the pitch variations when it comes to spinners? I usually get note of small things happening around me all the time, so similarly with cricket, while watching Saeed Ajmal and Mohammad Aamer demolishing English batting during second innings at the Oval, I noted one thing that for majority of predictions Hawk-eye was presenting were not accurate, and at times when couple of Ajmal's appeals were turned down, while seeing on hawk-eye it were seen that Saeed Ajmal was actually generating a bounce for the good length area like a pace bowler, although I personally think majority of those appeals which were turned down were creating doubts, but to show that those deliveries were actually bouncing so much off the batting crease to hit the bales of the wickets keeping in mind the ball HAD to travel some distance to hit the wicket, that seems as if its not Saeed Ajmal but Aamer, Malinga, Lee or Akhtar bowling.I personally don't think this current hawk-eye thing suits spinners as I myself play cricket and majority of spinners do rely on their late spin aswell and that thing is diminished from hawk-eye or virtual both! For bowlers like great Muralitharan or Warney who used to turn miles, the hawk-eye used to show their turn as a straight line instead of natural movement, and even when the ball used to bounce off the seam, even than hawk-eye showed its limitations!Even in the third image, you can clearly see that variable bounce can't be confirmed in this view. One might say that its just a predictor and 100% result can't be confirmed, ok than but its defying the rules of projectile motion theory, you can't predict trajectory 100% after it bounces, every bowler has his own bounce and so defining all of them under a simple predefined computer illustration is slightly unfair to the bowler, who already been not lucky when it comes to taking advantage compared to batters!On the whole its a good technology for showing pitch maps and ground scoring analysis but loop holes clearly been observed when it comes to spinner bowling, and similarly this technology can be tricky for surfaces in South Asia, where there are low bounce pitches void of much support for the bowlers except for spinners... Tags Technology in Cricket Facebook Twitter