There are still question marks about the Decision Review System in cricket and quite a few instances have ensured that the Board of Control for Cricket in India were not really hasty in their opposition to it over the last few years. The ball-tracking Hotspot device is the one component that causes the most consternation. It is used to deduce whether the ball took an edge off the bat, coming into play whenever there is a tight caught-behind call.
This dismissal of Kane Williamson in the second New Zealand-Pakistan Test at Hamilton on Friday reveals that there are certain things that neither the naked eye nor technology can capture, and it could have potentially put a side in danger. The Kiwi’s best batsman was dismissed and his departure left his side two wickets down within the first hour of the day’s play.
Here, Sohail Khan’s cutter viciously goes goes close to Williamson’s bat and lands in Pakistan keeper Sarfraz Ahmed’s hands. Pakistan’s stand-in captain Azhar Ali signals for DRS to be taken and the decision, which was originally given not out is overturned. Williamson, the gentleman cricketer that he is, does not protest but this was once such case where reality and technology walked on two separate roads, a few centimetres apart.
