**Scientists crack LBW quandary **
The German company Siemens claims to have invented a machine that will provide accurate leg before wicket decisions in cricket - the bane of umpires’ lives and a source of endless controversy, The Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
Scientists at Siemens’ English research works have adapted military missile-tracking technology to the task of predicting the path of a cricket ball, and umpires have been offered the chance to use the technology from next season, although the English cricket authorities remain suspicious.
Siemens claims the invention would remove the sort of controversy that surrounded Brian Lara’s LBW dismissal as the West Indies suffered defeat against England on Monday.
The West Indies star batsman was given out to a ball that pitched marginally outside the leg stump - and was thus not out, although the ball would clearly have gone on to hit the stumps as television camera replays showed. He was on 47 and batting confidently at the time. Hawk-eye software from Siemens processes information from cameras stationed around the wicket to track the ball as it leaves the bowler’s hand. In the case of an LBW decision, it can calculate to within 5 millimetres whether the ball would have hit the stumps.
The software, unveiled on Tuesday at Siemens’ Roke Manor research facility near Southampton, came from work for the ministry of defence on missile trajectories.
Cricket-mad engineers spotted the technology’s sporting potential and adapted it accordingly. If used by the "third umpire’’ - who monitors the action via video replay from the stands - contentious decisions could be avoided.
Sunset, the company that produces the cricket programming for the British Broadcasting Corporation - and introduced innovations such as the "snickometer’’ which detects the noise of the ball hitting the bat - plans to use the technology in its coverage next year. But the England and Wales Cricket Board said there were no plans to introduce it. Alan Fordham, operations officer, said: "With LBWs you can’t say for sure whether the ball would have hit the stumps.‘’