Officiating Cricket Bowling Using An Event-Based Computer Vision System
Masoumeh Izadi, Ehsan Goodarzi, Milad Farzalizadeh, Masoud Masoumi Moghadam, Aleksey Izmailov · 2023
The growing use of technology to permit more accurate and timely in-game decision-making enhances match adjudication and informs fans and the audience in professional sports competitions. The use of optical motion capture systems and video analytics has become the official support for major sports tournaments helping umpires to determine the penalty situations that are difficult to define by the human eye in fast-paced game events. In cricket, a front-foot-no-ball or, or overstepping, is a growing talking point among players and fans. There have been many occasions when this action has not been detected or called by the umpires. While some of such events make big stories many others remain only on the broadcast footage. Currently, the ICC mandates for international games is careful monitoring of every delivery that is subject to a dismissal by the TV umpire and the tech team stopping the game and rewinding video feeds for the slow motion of the player action. This can take many minutes of game time. Another illegal bowling action is defined as when the bowling arm is extended more than fifteen degrees before releasing the ball. This is called overextension. Due to the complex bio-mechanical movement of the bowling arm, it is almost impossible for the TV or on-field umpire to call this type of illegal bowling action, particularly because it has very heavy consequences for the player.In this paper, we present a computer vision software solution that continually tracks the key points in a bowler's body for illegal actions of overstepping and overextension. The system utilizes proprietary models that run on the run-out camera footage around the pitch and detect possible illegal actions almost in real-time. The software aims at simplifying the many tasks of an umpire and making adjudicating the match more efficient and more accurate, while no extra time is taken from the game. Our system has been endorsed by ICC after successful testing in the T20 cricket world cup 2022.