Cricket-a "Technical" Game?...Let me Explain.

Have you ever thought that how much time does it take for you to know that Sachin Tendulkar has hit a Six when he actually hits it? Or do you even know that the live feed you watch is actually being delayed? And moreover do you know that there are actually 500-600 crew men working to get the live coverage, which are covered in 25 Different camera's which includes the stump camera to the Ultra Slow Motion Cameras? And there are 300-400 people working onsite in order to get the Real Stadium atmosphere in fact better than the stadium view, well many questions which we might not be thinking about, some of us might knowing about it and some us don’t, but many of us don’t know about the real work happening and the technology used in it, this post is all about the Cricketing Technology and how are they being used.

The Coverage

The Video Feed which we receive is actually delayed for 4 seconds. But this is the Minimum time as we can’t digest the fact that we still are 4 seconds late. The Video which we receive is captured in 16-25 cameras. These feeds are sent to a Video Mixer where all the signals are monitored. This signal is called as Clean signal which is dealt with various forms of Graphics like slow motion replays, score ticker, .etc.They term this as a Dirty Signal. The Video mixer is like the heart of the system as the view can be flipped to different cameras which is eventually decided Crew Manager. Its he who decides about the different camera angles which we see on TV. It is known from one of my web search that Harsha Bhogle of ESPN STAR listens more often to his crew manager before he actually speaks. So here a commentator job is to concentrate on the voice of his manager, talk simultaneously about the live match, switch on to the facts about the Match and players on his Computer, which is definitely a job of a great MULTI TASKER and they are. Coming to the procedure, this Dirty signal is sent to the Outstation Broadcast or the OB Van from where the signal is sent to the Satellite, and then this is distributed to the Earth Station where some changes are made, like the advertisements, the studio panel review, logo of the channel, etc and finally we get the signal from our local station nearby our place and we watch, cheer and get our self entertained.
Now what if the system used crashes suddenly and this is actually the case sometimes, a backup goes on 2-3 laptops, so even this case is solved but the major equipments were given an Assured Time warranty, so even these equipments are changed accordingly. This certainly doesn’t seem like a 4 sec work, and now I hope reading this post certainly made you realize the hard work many people do, but it’s all the Information Technology and its Advancements

a screenshot of the software used to monitor all the Camera feeds

The Hawk-Eye

You might have heard this in many of the Cricket and Tennis matches these days. But for many of us who don’t know about “What Hawk-Eye is?”, then let me give you a small Introduction. A Hawk-eye is 3D analyses of the objects (a ball in this case) which predicts its path and let us know about the correctness of the decision made on a particular sport. This is developed by a group of engineers at Roke Manor Research Limited who had built the software which tracks the Ball Motion. This feature has been included in the Cricket Matches in 2001.This has been helpful in many major decisions, like the L.B.W, boundaries made overall in the match(called the Wagon Wheel),runs scored in a particular kind of a delivery bowled.Now,how this works?. A Digital snaps are taken every millisecond and then all these images are transformed to a 3-D image with special software and automatically all such images are merged to get the final Hawk-Eye Animation. This really is a complex procedure and takes few minutes of time to get the real view of the ball with 5mm Accuracy.

The Snicko

The Snicko, technically called as Snickometer is generally a powerful microphone, fitted to the stumps which can finely record the major nicks made when a ball is bowled. This is a powerful TV tool which helps in taking many major cricketing decisions.

Information Management System

When ever, a short pitch ball is bowled to Sachin Tendulkar, he hooks it up to a Six. So, A fielder is placed accordingly by the bowler. Now the bowler gets all this information from the Information Management System. This pretty much holds the records of all the bowlers and the batsman’s moves. You must have noticed every Team Coach carrying a Laptop but he essentially operates this software and records the videos. These Videos are viewed to the players by the coach in their Practice sessions and workout is made to resolve the weakness. This is made by a software called e-Cricket Pro(developed by phoenix solutions).This software is also used many of the TV broadcasters to brief all the situations, all the minor information are stored in their databases to used accordingly and given some feed to the Commentators.

These are some areas in Cricket where IT is used in fact there are many major areas which are yet to be discussed but still there is a great amount of technology involved.
Now the essence is that , playing cricket not only entertain the viewers but also made people innovate with some great ideas which are helpful in building IT.