The fourth umpire

The 27-year-old British scientist who has adapted missile-tracking technology for the benefit of cricket says he is waiting for a call from the International Cricket Council to demonstrate his device, and its uses.

Mathemetician Dr Paul Hawkins says his three-dimensional device, appropriately called Hawk Eye, incorporates image analysis and ball-tracking technology, and is intended to help umpires adjudicate on LBW decisions without the proverbial 'doubt'.

The ICC mandarins have already discussed the invention. Now Hawkins is waiting for the call to subject his device to field trials.

'Hawk Eye' is powered by a battery of six cameras deployed in pre-determined positions around the playing field, which will track the ball's trajectory from the moment it leaves the bowler's hand.

The data from the cameras is imposed on a computer screen, and from there on, the programme can predict to a micromillimeter where the ball will go had the pad not intervened.

Where did it pitch? Would it have hit the stumps, or carried past? Did it have the height to bounce over the bails? All the many factors the umpire today uses to adjudicate on LBW calls, are -- or will be, if and when Hawk Eye is deployed for regular use -- be computerised.

Hawkins, a research scientist with Roke Manor Research near Southampton, told this correspondent that preliminary discussions had already taken place with the ICC.

"The feeling I got was that at international level, they wouldn't introduce it right away", Hawkins said. "They are waiting to see how it works in field trials in one or two countries, before making a decision on its universal use."

In the event the ICC approves its use, each umpire will walk out with a little receiver, about the size of a small mobile phone. And like the mobile phone, the gadget has a small display window on which the umpire will, within five seconds of impact, get all the information he needs to decide whether the LBW appeal is legitimate or otherwise.

"The invention has been patented on behalf of my employers," Hawkins says, adding that while he will not personally benefit from its application, it has not done his career any harm. "The company I work for has a good incentive scheme for scientific staff who generate new ideas," the scientist explains.

The technology was developed in conjunction with Channel 4 production company Sunset and Vine -- a trailblazer when it comes to introducing technological innovations to enhance the pleasure of watching cricket on television.

"We brought in the red zone between the stumps, which we superimpose on our pictures to establish whether the ball bounced between the stumps, which is one of the criteria for LBW," Paul Ryan, technical producer for Sunset and Vine, reminded this correspondent. "We also introduced the snickometer, which is a visual representation to see if the ball nicked the edge of the bat as it passed the batsman.

"Again, we were involved with the implanting of audio microphones in the stumps, to detect the sound of a snick.

"Of the contentious areas in cricket, the LBW decision is one of the biggest -- because here you are dealing with a judgement call, the umpire has to make a call on whether the ball would have gone on to hit the stumps."

Thus, about 18 months ago, when Ryan was casting about for new ideas, he contacted an American company that was adapting military technology to enhance viewing for baseball.

The US company in turn put him in touch with Hawkins and his colleagues at Roke Manor Research.

Hawkins, a former minor counties cricket player, told Ryan how he was trying to adapt military technology for commercial purposes. "He said they were looking at cricket with a technology called image analysis", Ryan recalls. "Its a technology they use for tracking missiles, he wouldn't go into too much detail, because it has military, and therefore secret, aspects.

"They asked me if I could come to Lords', where they would set up a camera and do a feasibility study. We've taken it from there," Ryan explains.

"The technology basically consists of six cameras scattered around the ground at key vantage points, which observe the ball as it moves through the air. The cameras don't move, they're static. They track the ball through its entire trajectory, using three cameras at either end.

"Between them, the cameras can establish the ball's position very accurately, at intervals of every 1/100th of a second. And it provides three dimensional data, relating to where the ball actually is at any given point in time and where it is going from there.

"All this can then be colour coded, and reduced to helpful graphics that give you an accurate picture of what is happening."

Ryan points out that with the introduction of this device, LBW decisions -- normally the most contentious of any made on a cricket field -- become completely free of controversy. "Hawk Eye tells you where the ball is, it shows you where the ball is going and what it will do, and it does all this within four or five seconds."

Ryan and Hawkins are both so convinced of the new technology that they have persuaded their respective employers to set up a joint company to market it.

They believe it can be adapted for, and by, other sports as well.

The rest, they say, they are content to leave to history.