Hawk-Eye Founder Slams Vaughan's 'Uneducated' Opinion On DRS Transparency

Hawk-Eye founder Paul Hawkins has slammed Michael Vaughan for the former England player’s remark on the technology following Joe Root’s controversial dismissal in Ranchi Test against India. During the guests’ second innings, a Ravichandran Ashwin delivery crashed into Root’s pad but the umpire was not convinced about the LBW shout. India went for a review. Although it seemed like the majority of the ball was pitched outside the leg-stump, the technology deemed it fair and gave it out. Some experts and fans were not happy with the decision with Vaughan asking for more transparency in the system so that the viewers also get to see what happens during the tracking process to put “the noise to bed”.

Hawkins, in a recent interaction, revealed how the Hawk-Eye technology actually works during a Decision Review System (DRS) and the measures that are taken to maintain transparency and minimize errors.

“For every day, the guys will go out and measure the width of the stumps. And so that gets entered into the system. So you’re working off of the actual width of those stumps… So you calibrate the system for the environment that it’s there,” said the technology founder on The Analyst podcast.

“A good process that’s evolved in terms of quality control is that there is a van camera, which is more an internal process, making sure people aren’t on their phones. But the best thing in terms of quality control is an automatic screengrab of the tracking system is taken and that automatically goes to the ICC. So whilst it will never go to broadcast because there’s lots of intellectual property within those screengrabs for the internal quality control for the people that need to make sure that the technology providers are providing accurate answers, that’s all done,” he added.

Hawkins, particularly, also reacted to Vaughan’s suggestion and criticised the ex-player’s “unfortunate” view.

“The commentary, I think, is a little bit uneducated. It is unfortunate from Vaughan, because, obviously he was a fantastic player, really enjoyed watching him play, and a great commentator, very entertaining. But I think it’s a responsibility to the game, in terms of journalism. Perhaps a little bit more preparation in terms of his role as a journalist may help him explain what’s happening to the huge fan base of cricket so that what he writes is factually correct. In the same way as Hawk-Eye has an obligation to be factually correct, perhaps journalists do too,” said Hawkins.