The company behind technology supposed to lead to more accurate decisions in international cricket, has admitted its error denied England a crucial Australian wicket in the latest Ashes encounter.
Australia’s Alex Carey was on 72 runs when he faced a ball from Josh Tongue that was caught by Jamie Smith, leading to an immediate appeal for out from the England team.
They believed the ball had made contact with Carey’s bat before the catch. But an investigation using Snicko technology – designed to provide umpires with the evidence they need in such cases – concluded otherwise.
So Carey survived and went on to make 106 in the first innings of a test match that England cannot afford to lose if they want to stay in contention in the much anticipated Ashes series with Australia.
But then, at a press conference after the first day of the test match in Adelaide, Carey admitted that he thought he had actually made contact and edged the delivery, meaning he should have been out.
He suggested there was “a bit a feather” and accepted he had cashed in “a bit of luck”.
Snicko uses microphones on stumps to pick up sound to determine whether a bat has made contact with the ball.
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On the ball in question the technology revealed a clear spike in noise. However, TV umpire Chris Gaffaney swiftly ruled it was not out because the Snicko spike showed up before the ball had reached the bat.
But after Carey’s admission on Wednesday, BBG Sports, the company that owns Snicko, revealed there had been a mistake and accepted culpability.
The company admitted that the audio was incorrectly taken from the stump mic at the bowler’s end of the wicket, rather than the batter’s, creating the delay that put the audio spike and images so far out of sync.
“Given that Alex Carey admitted he had hit the ball in question, the only conclusion that can be drawn from this, is that the Snicko operator at the time must have selected the incorrect stump mic for audio processing,” BBG Sports said.
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Carey went on to make his vital century and another 76 runs were added to Australia’s total of 326 for eight before he was finally dismissed.
England appear to have lost faith in the Snicko system – having seen Jamie Smith dismissed in a similar situation in the first Test at Perth, where the picture once again appeared out of sync with the audio reading. England use a different technology called UltraEdge for home matches.
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Their Australian bowling coach, David Saker, summed up the mood of frustration in the visiting dressing room as he floated the idea of raising the matter with the match referee.
“I don’t think we’ve done anything about it so far but after today, maybe that might go a bit further,” he said.
“The boys were pretty confident he [Carey] hit it. I think the calibration of the Snicko is out by quite a bit and that has probably been the case for the series. There’s been some things that don’t really measure up. At that stage, it was a pretty important decision.
“There have been concerns about it for the whole series. We shouldn’t be talking about this after a day’s play, it should just be better than that. These things hurt, but you get through it. In this day and age you’d think the technology is good enough to pick things up like that.”
