HawkEye To Be Used To Track Wides From IPL 2025: Report – News18

The Indian Premier League (IPL) will use the HawkEye ball-tracking technology to better judge wide balls from the upcoming 2025 season. The decision was taken at the captains’ meeting in Mumbai ahead of the league starting on Saturday with a clash between Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Kolkata Knight Riders in Kolkata.
“Hawk eye and ball tracking will be used to decide on the height wides and wides outside the off-stump," news agency PTI quoted an informed official as saying.
Ball-tracking has been used for judging LBW calls for many years now. Last year, HawkEye implemented it for confirming waist-high no-balls. The company tested the idea for a couple of years and then measured the waist height of all participating players. For no-ball calls, it combined this data and it’s ball-tracking to judge if the trajectory of the ball was passing or would have passed (in case the batter hit it) over the waist.
No-balls and wides both came under the ambit of the Decision Review System (DRS) last year. It allowed players from both sides to review these decisions with the third umpire, the same day that they do for wickets. However, while ball-tracking made judging no-balls easier, the same wasn’t done for wides.
So, when players reviewed calls for wides outside the off-stump, the third umpires had to judge both the batters’ movement and the distance between the ball and the tram line to decide on it. It required them to watch multiple slow-motion replays which slowed down the game while the controversial calls weren’t completely eradicated. Some experts, like Sunil Gavaskar, felt it was redundant.
“The referrals for wides and bouncers should be done away with because they upset the rhythm and flow of the game. It is never going to have an impact on the game, like a wrong decision for out or not out can. So, its removal is a must," he wrote in his column for Sportstar.
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If ball-tracking can measure these distances and provide better information to the umpire, the controversies and delays might be reduced.
More rule changes are likely to be made official after the captain’s meeting, like legalising the use of saliva again.
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