Ed Kemp gives ESPNcricinfo’s Hawk-Eye tab a test run.
Here at AOC, we know what big cricket fans you are. Whether it’s a crucial, series-deciding one-dayer in the throes of an exciting denouement, or the opening morning of a blue-chip Test series, you want to be watching. We’re not so different ourselves.
And with the current international schedule as it is, there are few days that go by without someone playing some sort of cricket somewhere. But while many of us sit at computer screens for a living, few of us have access to television coverage during the working day. Nor can we all get away with the old earphone-up-the-shirtsleeve routine that some workers/schoolchildren employ in order to access TMS coverage on the sly.
Ball-by-ball commentaries have done wonders for the office-dwelling cricket fan’s ability to follow games as they unfold. Now ESPNcricinfo have added a further dimension to that experience with its new Hawk-Eye tab, optimised in Internet Explorer 9.
Available for any ongoing live international match, the service allows you to see the Hawk-Eye representations of all deliveries bowled, more or less as they happen. In the ‘Trajectory Viewer’ you can watch these representations over-by-over, seeing a succession of six balls just as you would on Sky when they’re showing you where a bowler’s last over was directed.
But the new addition is interactive. You can also use the Hawk-Eye tab to see a bowler’s pitch map, or beehive, as well as a batsman’s wagon wheel, on demand. In the absence of full television coverage, this seems a guaranteed way of bringing matches to life in the office, all with HMTL5 graphics in Internet Explorer 9. As you can choose which of Hawk-Eye’s tools you want to use, it’s actually a useful supplement to radio coverage, too. When you hear or read that ‘Anderson bowls a beautiful delivery, hits the seam and nibbles away off a length to narrowly beat the outside edge’ you can then summon up the trajectory viewer for a Hawk-Eye view of Jimmy’s latest jaffer.
Although obviously not the same as seeing it for real, this definitely adds something to the experience of following the cricket without television coverage, taking you a step closer. When there’s a live international, click on the match’s live scorecard on ESPNcricinfo and then find the Hawk-Eye tab. Let us know what you think…
