The ICC has (finally) admitted that the Hawkeye is not totally reliable. Pakistan batsman was not out in the last test, despite what the replays showed.
Well, Tendulkar was also given not in in the 2011 Semi Final, where the ball seem to magically turn away from the stumps. What now for Hawkeye? And similar technology in tennis and association football.
Hawk-Eye admits technical error in Masood dismissal | ESPNcricinfo.
Hopefully the systems are refined and improved so such errors become even more rare. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Hell even the wickets themselves aren’t infallible.
Well, the report you link to says it was due to:
a) Operator error and
b) Having four rather than the standard 6 cameras.
The answer to b) seems pretty obvious. As for a) no human system is ever going to be free of operator error. The question is whether we can best minimise operator error by using technology to assist, or by relying on pure human judgement.
I think Hawkeye has shown that it can be more accurate than the naked eyeball, this incident notwithstanding. The question is whether it’s worth allowing the third umpire some degree of judgement interpreting the Hawkeye results in order to prevent results such as this (I haven’t seen the Hawkeye track for the delivery, but by the account it was pretty obviously implausible). I’d tend to say no, because that leads to a vortex of second-guessing.
Basically, if it were shown that Hawkeye consistently had a higher error margin than advertised under normal operating conditions, that would call it into question. That it very rarely makes egregious errors in abnormal operating conditions doesn’t, because as lisiate says such errors can be addressed.
Business as usual, really.
The thing with pointing out the occasional error with Hawkeye in cricket is that it really only has to be better than what we had before - onfield umpires making massive mistakes that the entire ground knew about before the batsman had finished walking back to the pavilion.
No system is going to be 100% foolproof, and I have my own issues with Hawkeye myself (specifically, I don’t like the players have so much input into when it is used), but it’s a lot better than relying on human umpires.