According to a report on Cricbuzz, Ian Taylor, the MD of Virtual Eye that operates DRS in Australia and New Zealand, admitted to a human error from the operator that led to a fourth stump being visible in the replay during a DRS review in the SCG Test.

India had taken the DRS review for an LBW decision against Steve Smith and the replays to confirm the decision showed a fourth stump superimposing the third. It had created an outrage on social media with lots of users and experts pointing out the gaffe.

“We reported that immediately to the people we work with at the ICC because it was a mistake on our part – fortunately it did not affect the decision, the umpire was correct, but is should not have happened. We take full responsibility for that but the important thing was that the decision to stay with the umpires call was the correct one – the real ball track did show the ball missed,” Cricbuzz reported as Ian Taylor admitting.

“We tracked the ball normally in our tracking system and it showed it missing the stumps. For the DRS the next step is to play the ball track back, superimposed over the ‘end on’ broadcast TV camera when the 3rd umpire calls for it. At the start of play we calibrate the two TV cameras at each end of the pitch to ensure they are perfectly aligned when we play our ball track over the live camera. When we did that, before going to air, it was fine and the ball was clearly missing.

“Our operator went through the recalibration programme to realign the camera – he thought he had successfully done that but as soon as he replayed the video with the track on it, he realised that it hadn’t recalibrated correctly because the ball was now clipping the stump rather than missing it.”

“It was human error on our part,” he concluded.