Cricket: Virtual Eye error but Taylor was still out

Dale Steyn successfully appeals for the wicket of Ross Taylor. Photo / Getty Images

The creator of the Virtual Eye ball-tracking system has agreed that the decision to dismiss Ross Taylor lbw to Dale Steyn on Friday was not as accurate as it should have been - but Taylor was still out.

Last week Ian Taylor, the founder of Animated Research which sells its services to Sky Television, hit back at claims cricketers did not trust his company's technology. Yesterday he softened his stance, admitting the decision to give the New Zealand captain out for 17 was flawed.

The system predicted the ball would hit the middle and leg stumps. But once it had been adjusted for error, it was shown to be barely clipping the far edge of leg stump - meaning the system had got it wrong almost by the width of two stumps. However, Ross Taylor was still out.

It reinforces what Taylor said last week - that his system has a slim margin for error and if there were genuine mistakes they would step up and take the rap.

"When I was watching at home the Ross Taylor decision didn't look right," Taylor said. "We looked at the footage later and realised it was a worst case scenario. We use four high speed cameras for the decision review system.

Two cameras saw the ball perfectly, one camera saw it until it bounced and the fourth had sun shining into it and lost the ball a metre before it hit the pad. That created a perfect storm [for a problem] with the light dropping at the end of the day and the shadows increasing.

"What we should have done was raise an alarm and say there was not enough data to make a decision, which we are entitled to do. There was an example in Australia this summer under similar circumstances.

"The guys in the truck are making these calls in 10-15 seconds. They were worried if they didn't go to air they'd be in trouble but they didn't have enough time to make a call. It took half an hour to sort through the data to work out where it should've gone."

Taylor reiterated comments from last week that he would rather have a cheaper system that scrapped the predictor path and put the final decision in the hands of the third umpire.

"Trust them to make the decisions. They should be asked if there is any reason not to award the lbw [or catch].

"Until the International Cricket Council starts paying for the system, we can't do much more. There are limitations until we have more money to invest. Ninety-nine times out of 100, you can still trust it."