In the fevered environments within sporting arenas, anything that can help an official has to be a good thing
We are all suckers for a good story. And there was certainly a cracking two‑parter at Wimbledon this year. First came the news that 300 line judges had been replaced by artificial intelligence robots. Then, a few days later, it turned out there were some embarrassing gremlins in the machine. Not since Roger Federer hung up his Wilson racket has there been a sweeter spot hit during the Wimbledon fortnight.
First the new electronic line-judging system failed to spot that Sonay Kartal had whacked a ball long during her match against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova – which led to the Russian losing a game she otherwise would have won. Although, ironically, it happened only because an official had accidentally switched the system off.