The spidercam – or the Flying Fox as it’s referred to as in Australia – is the high fashion of televised cricket protection today, however on Tuesday it almost brought on severe damage to South African quick bowler Anrich Nortje within the second Test at Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Following a excessive-pace burst of quick bowling after lunch, Nortje was strolling within the outfield between overs when the aerial digital camera, which glides alongside movable cables, got here whizzing up from behind and hit him on his left shoulder and again, knocking him to the bottom.
Fortunately South Africa’s most spectacular bowler on a torrid second day was capable of rise up instantly, however he gestured his incredulity on the umpire who had seen the incident.
While it has develop into the style in rugby for the published producers to make use of digital camera footage for the advantage of the house workforce, it might absolutely be taking issues too far, (even for Australians!) to make use of an costly, 315kg digital camera to barrel into gamers.
While Nortje didn’t appear too bothered by the incident after the day’s play, he did say gamers have sounded the warning earlier than about how low the spidercams typically journey.
“We’ve spoken before about how low the camera goes for certain interviews. I really don’t think it should be travelling head-high. They need to take Marco Jansen (2.07m tall) into consideration as well,” Nortje stated with a smile.
“It knocked my shoulder and elbow and the medical staff will just monitor it. I just saw cables, I turned and moved my head, saw the camera and it all happened a little quick. I didn’t really know what had hit me.”
Fox apologises
Broadcasters Fox Cricket have made no public point out of the harrowing incident, however a Proteas spokeswoman stated they did apologise to the workforce.
“They put it down to human error and the cam was disabled for the rest of the day. They’ll ensure that measures are put in place for the remainder of the match and series to ensure that it doesn’t get as low as it did today,” Proteas media supervisor Lucy Davey instructed The Citizen.
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