London, Aug 2 (IANS) BBG Sports, the company that owns the Hot Spot technology which is used for the Decision Review System (DRS) in cricket, has rejected former England captain Michael Vaughan’s claims that the technology fails to spot edges if vaseline is applied on the side of the bat.
The controversy erupted when Vaughan suggested that V.V.S. Laxman may have applied vaseline to the edge of his bat, which helped him escape a caught-behind appeal on the second day of the Trent Bridge cricket Test.
England were convinced that Laxman had edged a James Anderson delivery. Hot Spot did not show any deflection, though Snicko showed there was a noise as ball passed bat.
‘We have done testing over the past two days in our office and can conclude that putting vaseline on the side of a cricket bat has no discernible effect on our Hot Spot system. Maybe if you were able to apply 10 millimetres (a centimetre) of vaseline on the side of the bat it would make a difference but we believe that this would be near impossible to achieve,’ BBG Sports said in a statement.
Warren Brennan, the owner of Hot Spot, had said the device’s accuracy is around 90-95 per cent and can be impacted by such things as bright sunshine and the speed of the bat in the shot.
