Had any form of video technology been in play at dear old Wembley on that blessed Saturday afternoon of July 30, 1966, England might never have won their only World Cup.
To this day there is not one shred of pictorial evidence to prove that Geoff Hurst’s shot against the crossbar, which gave Bobby Moore’s merry band of men their crucial extra-time lead, bounced behind the German goal line. For certain Sir Geoff himself would not have gone on to become the first player ever to score a hat trick in a World Cup final, and then be knighted for that achievement.
When it comes to artificial intelligence in sport, be careful what you wish for. As Wimbledon is discovering to embarrassment more acute than even the most crippling case of tennis elbow.
To no surprise whatsoever among millions of normal humanoids outside the grassy cloisters of SW19, the electronic line calling system is proving to be about as fault-proof as a leaky umbrella on any outside court in a storm.
As most of us know all too well, the higher the tech the more frequent the fall. How often the TV cable box suffers a glitch at the climactic moment of a programme. The more complex the digital systems in our cars, the more easily they are stolen from kerbside. Go to the expense of installing a sophisticated light and sound system in your home and be sure the repair man won’t come far behind.
So it goes now on the green and pleasant pastures across which the Championships – as it grandly styles itself – have stampeded away from beloved tradition and into an unproven experiment with oh so modern science.
Line judges have been hastily ditched for AI – and now we are facing the consequences
The axing of line judges has contributed to an embarrassment worse than even the most painful tennis elbow
Follow in trendy haste and repent at anything but leisure. First the whole paraphernalia switches off and fails to notice a long shot drop further beyond the base line than a baby’s dummy dropped from a pram. Then it fails to discern the difference between a boy and a small yellow ball bounding on the court.
They tried to blame the ball boy for that shambles. Shamefully so, since the little chap was scurrying as fast as all those lads and lassies do this fortnight.
The first of those instances carried the most alarming significance. Because it followed the replacing of linesmen and women by a not-so-smart gadget, a development which one of the players involved described as ‘scary’.
So it is, when it requires a flesh and blood umpire to refute the evidence of his own eyes. The man in the chair when British hopeful Sonay Kartal missed her shot ordered a potentially vital point to be replayed, even thought he had clearly seen it land out.
The official reason given? That he followed the correct procedure. What kind of protocol is it, pray, that calls for an official to turn a blind eye to reality?
The one call waiting to be made now is this: ‘Enough.’
Enough of traipsing after the fashion of less-Grand Slams in Melbourne and New York. Enough of bowing to the juvenile clamour for new-fangled technology, especially before it is proven to be working properly.
Enough, above all, of putting infernal machines in place of the human element, which hitherto involved all the drama, fascination, and controversy which came with the line calls.
One failure of the AI line judge system came about when a ball boy ran across the court shortly before Taylor Fritz served to Karen Khachanov – the system confused the boy for a ball
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova was outraged after having to replay a point where the AI line judge did not spot that opponent Sonay Kartal had hit the ball out – because it had been turned off
Before condemning me as a dinosaur, know that I am not against all progress. But Wimbledon should revert at once to the preceding use of the Hawk-Eye equipment. That which allowed players to make a limited number of challenges against human decisions which they considered wrong, then for the truth to be revealed to us all on screens by video replay,
Just the way it works so well in cricket. Not least with its built-in deference to the human umpires’ original decisions in very close calls.
Instead tennis is going the unhappy way of football by bowing to the march of the machines. It is six years now since the advent of VAR in the Premier League and still the disputes over its accuracy, value and validity rage on.
If the dreaded Video Assistant Referee has proved anything whatsoever it is that offside, the most contentious issue of all, ought never be decided by the length of an eyelash. That goes against every human instinct.
One of the many fiddlings with the offside law affirmed that a player is onside if he is level with the rearmost defender. In the spirit of that rule no man should be ruled offside if he is merely a fingernail, a nose-hair, a boot-stud or a nobbly knee-cap out of line. By all reason, none of that constitutes gaining an unfair advantage. Not so in this age of the technocrat.
Whatever next? What if a centre forward’s sweat or spit spills over one of those accursed line drawings?
What next at Wimbledon? Abandonment of the historic all-white kit, in yet another concession to so-called ‘progress?’ Maybe because those jittery line-machines are blinded by all that dazzling purity?
‘Tis a dangerous path they tread if it requires moving good people out of the way. As Is happening with the loss of so many jobs in the national work place. Linesmen and women can make mistakes but the means for correcting human errors was already in place.
Does tennis really want to follow football down the road to technology chaos and AI madness?
Bring back our great tradition (even if John McEnroe might not welcome back line judges)
Nor, by the way, is AI the force for good on earth which another form of greenery – the eco-political – claims it to be. The latest findings reveal that this technology drains such an immense amount of electrical power and so many millions of gallons of water that the more of it there is, the greater the damage to the planet.
All at a higher financial price by far than the cost of hiring human beings to keep a keen eye on the Wimbledon lines for a couple of weeks.
Remember, too, that if a machine had been in play in north west London in the summer of ’66 instead of a Russian linesman – who is believed to have satisfied his grudge against Germany for waging the Second World War by flagging a goal for Sir Geoff – England may well be waiting yet for its first World Cup.
Artificial Intelligence, by the way, is exactly what it says on the tin. Artificial.
