What New TV Sport Innovation Has The Ashes Provided

Few things in TV sports have been covered for longer than the Ashes. The contest itself dates back to Victorian times, arising from a mock obituary after Australia won at the Oval in 1882 and being given substance through the remnant of a burned bail inside a perfume jar at the heart of an Anglo-Australian love story.

All of that may seem a long way from cutting-edge 21st-century TV production technology, but this most enduring of bilateral sporting rivalries and the nature of the sport itself has always lent itself to innovations and the provision of vast amounts of information.

As with other sports, data is not just about the obvious numbers like runs and wickets, with the use of Hawk-Eye technology providing both a means of decision-making and data to enable a growing array of new forms of analysis.

Graphics will show details such as how many balls a bowler pitches in a particular area, the distance a big six has been hit, the average speeds bowled and even provide comparisons between how differently two deliveries have bounced to show that a pitch is becoming uneven or the ball is getting softer.

What New Graphics Are Being Used In This Ashes Series?

In the opening Test match at Perth, the newest graphics (provided by the host broadcasters Channel 7 and Fox and then seen in the UK by TNT Sport subscribers) were used to highlight the biomechanics of batters and bowlers alike. This takes a subject that is often a matter of academic study and brings it to the TV screen.

A notable feature of such studies has been for bowlers or batters to have a series of biomarker sensors attached to joints on their bodies (such as elbows, knees and hands)  to aid analysis. The graphics used in Perth imitated this (although no such sensors were actually in place), with Meccano-like shapes representing the batters in replays.

These were then used to demonstrate things like the transfer of weight backwards or forwards by batters in percentage terms, or the speed at which the bowler’s arm comes over.

However, the key with such use of technology is not to get carried away. It should keep the viewer informed with insight to help them understand some of the intricacies of a game that they will not have played at an elite level.

This should be taken as a word of caution; not everyone will like new graphics, which include a full spectrum of colours creating a ‘whoosh’ when the bowler’s arm comes over, or the bat is swung. This can easily be seen as gilding the lily. As commentator and former England player Stephen Finn said in Brisbane: “Got to love a purple firework.”

Will UK Broadcasters Copy Australian TV Graphics Innovation?

However, that does not mean such biomechanics-related graphics will not be used in TV production here in Manchester, where broadcasters like the BBC might be at the head of the queue to do so, albeit in football or tennis rather than cricket, where it does not have the TV broadcasting rights. It may be that the colours are a little less garish, however.

If such graphics are adopted here, it would follow a long tradition in TV sports, especially cricket, where Australia has proved to be the home of innovation.

A dispute over the awarding of TV rights in the 1970s led to Channel 9 owner Kerry Packer paying big money to lure top players to play in ‘World Series Cricket’, which, apart from disrupting the game, brought various innovations for TV audiences, such as white balls and coloured clothing for players in limited-overs games under lights.

What Is Daddles The Duck All About?

Along with this came the increasing use of on-screen graphics, one of which, the cartoon figure Daddles the Duck, would be seen accompanying any batter out without scoring back to the pavilion. Daddles has become a fixture of TV cricket coverage Down Under.

Other broadcasters haven’t adopted the idea of cartoon ducks, but other elements have been copied. Among the simplest graphics is the score being displayed in the corner of a screen while the ball is in play.

UK viewers watching TV highlights of the Ashes in Australia in the 1980s might have marvelled at this and wondered why the BBC did not do the same, rather than sporadically showing the score now and again between overs. Eventually, this happened and it is now the norm.

The use of graphics in sport has grown through a mixture of smart innovation, a bit of irreverence as things became less traditional and, in recent years, thanks to new TV technology.

Biomechanical analysis may be the latest thing, but it surely will not be the last.