Published: Aug 12, 2013, 01:17 PM (IST)
Edited: Aug 12, 2013, 01:17 PM (IST)
Warren Brennan had accused England players of using fibreglass tapes of their bats © Getty Images
Aug 12, 2013
The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Monday warned Warren Brennan, the inventor of Hot Spot, to not accuse cricketers of having cheated his technology by using fibreglass tapes without ample evidence.
“We did warn him that if he made a statement along those lines, if the inference was that the players were trying to cheat the Hot Spot system he would need some strong evidence to support that,” Geoff Allardice, ICC’s cricket manager was quoted as saying by Australia’s Daily Telegraph.
“There is no evidence to support that assertion and certainly from the comments of the teams you can see that they don’t believe that that happens,” he added.
Brennan made his concerns public when he tweeted former England skipper Michael Vaughan, “Michael, its time you investigate why players are using fibreglass tape on the edges of their bats.”
Allardice claimed he received an email last Monday from Brennan saying that footage had been examined with claims that coatings on the bat might have been dulling down the Hot Spot mark.
“He made us aware of that. On Tuesday, he did some testing and informed us of that. He also advised us that he was intending to make a media statement,” Mr Allardice said.
“We talked about the timing of that. It’s his company, his product, he’s free to say whatever he likes in the media.
“We were expecting to see something either yesterday or today.”
However, Allardice claimed that it was too early to dismiss the technology.
“I think it’s very early days, in that players have had coatings on bats, and manufacturers’ stickers on bats, and reinforcing tape on bats forever and a day,” he said.
“We listened to Warren’s view and there may be something in it but I’d think we’d want to gain a lot more evidence before we’d look at rule changes or anything like that,” he added.
“We would like to see some more evidence from on the ground with players in action to support that.
“At this stage we’ve got no intention of changing the rules in the short term,” Allardice concluded.
