Smart cricket ball: A solution to ball-tampering
It has been a heart-rending journey watching some of the prodigious cricketers getting slated over the ball-tampering issue of late. The cricketing world will miss one of the fab-four of modern day cricket, Steve Smith, as he will be out owing to suspension along two other fine batsmen—David Warner and Cameron Bancroft.
Little did the disgraced trio of Australia know about the consequences they were going to face following what Bancroft had done during day-3 of the third Test between the Baggy Greens and the Proteas.
Cheers to technology as we may never witness another sandpaper-gate in years to come. After the introduction of equipment like stump-mic, stump cam, umpire cam, LED stumps and bails, and the helmet cam, it is time for the ‘smart ball’ to present the advantages bestowed upon the game by technology.
The smart ball is the first high-tech attempt to battle one of this game’s most prickly issues. It has a microchip, a camera, and a chemical treatment at the core of the new technology incorporated into the new ball.
The microchip will respond if normal degradation is accelerated due to an exaggerated impact. The chemical makeup will release a special dye that will change the color of the ball once anyone attempts to tamper with the ball. Besides, it will be particularly sensitive to sweetened saliva and gouging, both popular techniques with tamperers.
The camera is a miniaturized version of the Stump Cam which will feed live images to the third umpire during play.
Image Courtesy: The New Daily
The estimated cost to manufacture each ball is about $2000, but cricketing bodies worldwide believe it is a small price to pay to restore the reputation of Test cricket.
The new technology developed by Melbourne scientists is expected to be released officially before next Ashes series in July as Australian and British authorities are pressing researchers to complete their work by April 1 next year. If so, the convicted Australian players will probably start their post-ban period with a ball that’s been designed to tackle something they have been penalized for.
“We’ve been working on this for several years now, but we’ve fast-tracked it because of the events in South Africa,” one of the lead researchers told The New Daily.
“We believe this will end ball tampering forever,” said the researcher, who works at one of Australia’s leading universities.
“In effect, it will be a three-way system. You might be able to beat one of the safeguards, but you probably won’t beat two – and you certainly won’t beat all three.”
