Should the DRS be mandatory?

[Arthur Crabtree]

That doesn't feel fair to me, and against the spirit of what the system is trying to achieve. The umpire didn't think the lbw was out, and it didn't fall within the margin for error necessary for an lbw not out. Though it almost doesn't matter what the protocol is, as long as we can get everyone to agree on, and understand it. ;)

[hopeforthebest]

That doesn't feel fair to me, and against the spirit of what the system is trying to achieve. The umpire didn't think the lbw was out, and it didn't fall within the margin for error necessary for an lbw not out. Though it almost doesn't matter what the protocol is, as long as we can get everyone to agree on, and understand it.

From now on the players will have to read the umpires mind before making a referral.

[sussexpob]

That doesn't feel fair to me, and against the spirit of what the system is trying to achieve. The umpire didn't think the lbw was out, and it didn't fall within the margin for error necessary for an lbw not out. Though it almost doesn't matter what the protocol is, as long as we can get everyone to agree on, and understand it.

Thats conjecture tbf. We dont know what discussions the third umpire and on the field umpire had, but it is clear from the broadcasters/commentators and my own opinion that he looked out lbw in real time. I mean DFM criticising the decision by SKY to show the lbw was laughable, there seems to be an assumption that everyone was united for a catch.... its fielding 1-1, if a ball loops up near the edge you catch it to give yourself two possible outs, and obviously dont leave the ball to die and celebrate or appeal.

In my interpretation of the rules the third umpire can at that point, and should at that point, ask the umpire if the presence of an edge is the only think stopping the lbw. By asking if an edge is present and ruling the catch first you have less chance of sticking with the on field umpire decision because then the margin for error with not out gives an unjust benefit to the batsman.... if the umpire instructs the third umpire that lbw was also in the mix, a presence of a definite edge will still lead to the same call, and the only thing saving the batsman is if it is unquestionably not hitting the stumps.

I mean I dont understand this idea that justice was served because Rogers would have been "just" out..... we dont say in football that its a good call by the linesman because the goal was "just offside" or landed "nearly over the line".....

The benefit of umpires call is to stop teams overturning everything, and in the spirit and nature of the rules we dont want overturning en mass or challenging enmass.... I think its a lame argument to suggest overturning is in the spirit of the rules when the ball was hitting.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Not necessary, they ask him what it has been given for. It is only right they should know that.

[sussexpob]

That doesn't feel fair to me, and against the spirit of what the system is trying to achieve. The umpire didn't think the lbw was out, and it didn't fall within the margin for error necessary for an lbw not out. Though it almost doesn't matter what the protocol is, as long as we can get everyone to agree on, and understand it.

From now on the players will have to read the umpires mind before making a referral.

Indeed... the fielding captain or bowler is not allowed as per the rules to say anything to the umpire, and neither is the batsman.... and also you have the possbility that the umpire can see the replay once the "T" signal is made, and can change his mind.... as per the rules the 3rd umpire works in total isolation, and the replay can be shown as soon as the decision to review is made.... but the person still involved in the direction of the process can see on the big screen.... I think thats wrong, the umpire yesterday could be on the radio watching the replay thinking, oh that looks high we will go with the catch instead, and change his mind... not saying it happened but the process allows it to happen

[sussexpob]

Not necessary, they ask him what it has been given for. It is only right they should know that.

Nope... read the protocol, in deciding to review the captain can only speak to his fielders before a player review, the umpire can only speak to the square leg umpire in an umpire review, and the batsman may speak only to his batting partner

[Arthur Crabtree]

If the umpires didn't discuss what the decision was given for (with each other), then that was an error. If it was given for LBW, then he should have been out. But isn't it also conjecture to suggest that they might not have identified what the dismissal was for?

If the players can't ask what the umpire what decision was for (and they do, and seem to be told) then that puts them at an unfair disadvantage in the few occasions this arises. The commentators suggested Rogers actually asked in this case.

[sussexpob]

If the umpires didn't discuss what the decision was given for (with each other), then that was an error. If it was given for LBW, then he should have been out. But isn't it also conjecture to suggest that they might not have identified what the dismissal was for?

If the players can't ask what the umpire what decision was for (and they do, and seem to be told) then that puts them at an unfair disadvantage in the few occasions this arises. The commentators suggested Rogers actually asked in this case.

From the protocol

The captain may consult with the bowler and other fielders or the two batsmen
may consult with each other prior to deciding whether to request a Player Review.
However in order to meet the requirement of (b) above, such consultation will need
to occur almost instantly and be very brief. Under no circumstances is any pla yer
permitted to query an umpire about any aspect of a decision before deciding on
whether or not to request a Player Review. If the umpires believe that the captain
or batsman has received direct or indirect input emanating other than from the
players on the field, then they may at their discretion decline the request for a
Player Review. In particular, signals from the dressing room must not be given.

If Rogers did ask the umpire then he broke the rules and his review should have been turned down!

[Arthur Crabtree]

Absolutely.

There's no reason to think the catch wasn't the referral. It was certainly what England were appealing for. Though that doesn't matter.

[sussexpob]

It's clear that you have a great deal of practical experience in audio technology, sussex, whereas I don't, but really what you're saying comes before what I'm arguing. It's clear from looking at the Snicko waveforms on TV that somehow they've managed to overcome most of the difficulties you outline and produce an audio signal that, from my experience, would easily be audible as a click. Below is a waveform from my 'marble' video, and I'm sure you'll agree that it looks very similar to a Snicko waveform - and the click's very clearly audible.

On the first part, it takes a long time to render a sound file into a decent format. MP3's are designed for quick downloading, but they are literally shells of sound files that lose crazy amounts of quality. A Wav file, which loses no quality, is huge! Even short burst of a minute can be up to 50mb depending on how many channels you are rendering, and this can take several minutes to convert into other formats.

To be fair though I could plug the sound of a test match into a mixer and run the tv into a sound sequencer and probably do a have decent job with a slight delay. Tbh, one thing that is unaviodable in the latency, its much like resistance in an electronic wire, where each hardware you use will have a latency that creates a delay from the sound being produced to being heard... even top top systems have the slightest latency which would play out over time a lot more, so I guess a continuous recording over several hours would keep on having to be brought back in sync, or each ball recorded separately.

In the latter situation there shouldnt be any reason why an umpire could have an engineer show him a pretty accurate indication very quickly, even instantly. The problem is producing something that looks good for tv imo.

Part of the reason I made the 'marble' video was to demonstrate that there may not be a video frame corresponding to the time at which the ball passes the bat, and that seems to trouble some members; this was clearly evident in the video because, although the marble clearly bounces, it's never shown in contact with the table. Unfortunately, I haven't yet found a way to post it

Having thought about it last night, I came to the conclusion that there are some very interesting things you could do with this. Snicko uses an osicillator to demonstrate the sound pattern, and in crude terms a synthesizer is also an osicillator that fires an electronic pulse to be manipulated into any sound wave form you want, which then played with creates its own timbre and sounds.

It wouldnt be hard to identify a frequency level that is unique to fine edges. You could setup a synthesizer to channel the sound into it with all other unrelated frequencies filtered out. When the isolated frequency is picked up within the microphone, signifying an edge, the noise in question would be unfiltered producing a sound. You could have the channel in the umpires ear because it would be totally silent until the edge frequency triggered it! You could play with the decay of the sound to make this clearly audible for any of length of time you want, so in essence everytime snicko registered a snick the umpire would get a buzz sound for say 10 seconds channelled to his ear.

I am sure you could even connect it with led's in the stumps to go red when an edge is detected, I mean the possibilities are endless.

It could be solved as easily as that...

[D/L]

The Rogers incident is a sore point with me. I believe the system should be used to arrive at the "right" decision. If he's not out caught behind but he's out lbw then IMHO he should be out. This technicality of what you're appealing for is a nonsense....

The clipping of the stump would have handed the call to the umpire, Mike. He made no decision on LBW, therefore Rogers could not have been out.

[hopeforthebest]

http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-2 ... 61063.html


The inventor of hotspot is getting desperate now. Bats have always had coatings of one kind or another and the modern bat would probably be lucky to last one innings without one.

[D/L]

I'm more interested in this concept of 'a second chance'.

The whole basis of the sport is that the batsman has no 'second chance - being given out should be the equivalent of being shot dead!

The sound of being bowled was called 'the death rattle' for a reason - there's no coming back. The raising of the finger by the umpire was the final death knell of an innings - it was a finality which set cricket apart from other sports.

By the same token, the words 'not out' signalled a reprieve from the hangman's noose, whilst the bowler and fielders trudged back like lions robbed of the kill.

With DRS much of that has changed and cricket is much the poorer for it. These days I can't wait for the 'reviews' to have been used up - then one can watch, and share, the disappointments and celebrations knowing that they are not a false dawn or a prelude to finding out that Hamlet hasn't died yet- in fact he's going to be on stage a bit longer - indeed he might never die if they declare....

That’s a very good post, but the only reason we didn’t have DRS in the “(g)olden days” was that we didn’t have the technology.

[DeltaAlpha]

Much of what you say is over my head, sussex - I know nothing at all about synthesisers and the like; I'll have to ponder a little, but it does sound an interesting possibility.

When I made the 'marble' video, I cut it from the frame before the marble bounced to the frame after it had bounced, and the resulting video was about 0.2 seconds - just three frames, actually. I then extracted the sound, which was in PCM format, loaded it into software that shows the waveform and took a screen-shot. It didn't take much more than a couple of minutes, even though I was working out how to do it while I was doing it!

When I was thinking about it this morning, I wondered whether, in cricket, it would be possible to show three things side by side - two video frames and the audio waveform, in this order:

1) The last frame before the ball reaches the bat;
2) The audio waveform that covers the time between 1 and 3;
3) The first frame after the ball has passed the bat.

None of these are large files and would take very little time to process.

The main objection to doing this could be where you hit the nail on the head and said, "The problem is producing something that looks good for tv imo." I think that's the problem with all the technologies: they're aimed at TV viewers rather than helping umpires.

We seem to have two threads in one here, and neither is really on topic. Moderators...

[sussexpob]

When I made the 'marble' video, I cut it from the frame before the marble bounced to the frame after it had bounced, and the resulting video was about 0.2 seconds - just three frames, actually. I then extracted the sound, which was in PCM format, loaded it into software that shows the waveform and took a screen-shot. It didn't take much more than a couple of minutes, even though I was working out how to do it while I was doing it!

PCM, or Pulse code modulation, is standard way of converting analog waves to digital signals. It reads the amplitude of the sound wave and stores the information in a way that the computer can then interpret digitally. It does this by taking lots of samples to read the amplitude of the wave and records them using "bit depth" readings. Everything in between the sample is not recorded but defaults to the last reading though, so you are losing quality.

From an oscillation perspective, you have to think that you are converting something into a more simplified way, then reconverting it back to waveform in a digital format with the computer tracing the difference in the sample points by guess work, so each time you are further dumbing down the original recording. The PCM format will also compress the data while it is doing it(hence professionals use the uncompressed WAV format).

In order to maintain accuracy of the original source you have to use a bit rate depth and sampling rate that is really good, and this would take a lot more time to convert than your example and maybe several minutes professionally. Out of interest do you know the sampling rate(in Hertz) and the bit depth(in bits?).

In real terms you also have to think that most digital sample rates, even professionally, only sample at around 29 frames per second at a maximum which is the same as the camera they operate with, and this sample rate will peg back the initiation of sound everytime it is converted because the point at which sound is initiated will conform to when the same hits.

In visual terms then, a ball could quite easily pass the bat before the point at which the sample is registered as a sound... after that the bit depth will record the whole snick usually that follows. This idea that its all about syncing the pictures is artificial. They are two separate channels with separate sample timings, so even setting the visual image at the same time as the image frame kicks in(assuming the sample rates are the same) will lead to the image and sound being out of sync.

To a certain extent this means that in order to sync the image you are guessing where the sound originated from because you are purposefully syncing it to occur when it passes the edge... when the possibility of an edge and a flick of the pad is in play with the sound registered after it has passed both, the snicko operator could actually sync the images based on an uneducated guess without hours worth of time to work out the sample rates.