Was that a penalty? Was the batsman out? How did he make that shot? Technology is transforming sport

With Oakland Athletics starting the 2002 Major League Baseball season with an annual payroll of a mere $39 million compared to the New York Yankees’ $125 million, hardly anyone expected them to earn bragging rights. However, Oakland ran up a 20-match winning streak, a feat unparalleled in the 102 years of baseball history. They championed the philosophy of picking unsung players, and, more important, of blending analytics and wisdom in the right proportion to produce a miracle.

It has been a question of prolonged debate. Has science done more harm than good in sports? The word “technology” entered the sporting lexicon a while ago, but it is becoming ubiquitous only now. Almost every stakeholder in the sports business – teams, federations or the media – are trying to figure out the best ways to leverage not one but multiple technologies.

Engaging the fans has always been a predominant concern. Earlier this year, Reliance enabled free Wi-Fi services in six cricket stadiums across India during the World Twenty20. Mobile devices are acting as “second screens” for viewing televised sports in our country, with fans being able to keep an eye on their team’s score from anywhere.

Significant sporting events are taking advantage of smartphone apps for managing the ticketing system, starting from allocating seat numbers to indicating the closest bathroom in the stadium. The hosts of Wimbledon, the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, have already partnered their long-standing sponsor IBM in order to keep their fans involved with the game at all time.

After the recent boost of wearable technologies in the global market, sporting teams around the world are making use of it to reap their benefits. Indian teams are also catching up in this aspect. In the 2016 edition of the Indian Super League, we have all seen players from different clubs wearing a black vest during their match and practice sessions. These lightweight vests come with in-built GPS devices and track a player’s speed, high and low intensity runs, heart rate, jumps, deceleration, and every other details, providing real-time data during the practice sessions.

ISL team Chennaiyin FC has gone the distance to appoint Catapult, the manufacturer of these vests, as their official performance partner for this season. The innovation has garnered more than 850 clients in its ten years of service, including FC Bayern München, Leicester City, and Chelsea FC. It has also been used actively by India’s hockey teams – men and women – and the national football team.

Technology comes to football

As a game, football has finally adopted technological innovations, with goal-line technology – did the ball cross the line? – and vanishing spray – where the wall should stand – gaining worldwide fame during the 2014 World Cup. The idea of a “video assistant” is already in trial mode, and the new president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, believes it was a “historic” day for sport when offline officials watched video replays during an international friendly between France and Italy to adjudicate on an appeal for a penalty. Slated to be applied experimentally during the Bundesliga and the Serie A, among others, this could lower on-field refereeing errors significantly.

The idea of eradicating human error from football has been a contentious affair, as fans have fretted that players could misuse the technology to disturb the flow of the game. Infantino said “The flow of the game is crucial. We cannot put that in danger. That is why we have to be open to test.” The idea is already under live trial in 12 national associations and one confederation, and if things run smoothly, we could expect to see video referees no later than 2017-‘18.

A database of performance

We are all familiar with the way hawk-eye technology is used to judge a leg-before-wicket decision in cricket. Hawk-eye tracks the trajectory of the ball from the point of release. PitchVision, a newly formed company, has been using a similar technology to document the entire details of a delivery, from its trajectory to its point of contact with the bat.

All the recorded data is accessible online, and users will have their own profile to see how well they have performed in a practice session. It essentially gives rise to “remote coaching”, as coaches can judge a player’s skill or mistakes from recorded data, even if they are miles away geographically.

The technology is currently under use in cricket academies all over the world, including MCC, Harrow School, and those run by international cricket boards. PitchVision has recently collaborated with the Sourav Ganguly Foundation and schools across West Bengal will have free access to the technology. Ganguly believes it will inspire more school children to actually consider cricket as a career.

In the NBA, North America’s professional basketball league, all the teams have employed SportVU tracking, a system of six cameras in every arena to accurately measure the movements of the ball and every player on the court, generating an entire database of performance information. The league is producing more data than ever than its 70-year history, and it is actually changing the way the game is played.

It has helped shift the emphasis from how many points a player scores to the productivity of touch or of defensive effectiveness. It is also influencing players to take different kinds of shots on the court. And its greatest impact lies in helping the team management build a squad of compatible and effective players.

Of course, there is opposition to the loss of instinct, insight and the unpredictablity of human decisions. But if technology can provide the double whammy of improved individual and team performances and accurate referring and umpiring, perhaps it would be unwise not to allow it to meld with competitive sports.