Re: ICC's bowls a bouncer to the bowlers
The Hawk Eye is not perfected yet. The subsequent path of the ball after hitting the person is subject to errors. A batsman should be allowed to appeal a LBW decision ONLY if he believes the ball hit the bat first. The decision should be referred to the TV umpire. The TV umpire would only rule whether the initial contact was with the bat or not. If yes, batsman is given NOT OUT. If there is no bat involved then the batsman is penalized 50% of his match fee and also given OUT.
I agree that Hawk should not be used at this time where we have to depend on it to extrapolate the trajectory of the ball.
However, it can be, and should be used to decide whether the ball PITCHED in fron of the stumps or not.
An LBW decision has the following factors that can influence the validity of dismissal:
(1) Where the ball pitched
(2) Whether it hit the bat/pad first
(3) How far out the batsman was
(4) whether he intended to play the ball
(5) the trajectory of the ball had it not hit the pads
While each one of these can introduce some error in the judgement, (1) and (2) can definitely be corrected/verified with the help of hawkeye.