Kasper bowls up a ball to beat umpires’ howlers

Ashes hero Steve Smith will soon be smashing a lot more than leather, if former Test star Michael Kasprowicz gets his way.

Former Test cricketer and Jetson Industries board member Mike Kasprowicz, right, shows off a connected cricket ball with Jetson founder Ben Tattersfield. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Ashes hero Steve Smith will soon be smashing a lot more than just leather, if former Test cricket star Michael Kasprowicz gets his way.

“Kasper”, as he was known by fans, is one of the brains behind the “connected cricket ball”, a Brisbane-based hi-tech invention set to replace Snicko and dodgy umpiring with sensors and data.

The smart ball will be launched in London next month in partnership with a large distributor, and Kasprowicz told The Weekend Australian his aim was to get it used in big marquee competitions such as The Ashes.

The first day of the series was marred by diabolical umpiring, with Shane Warne describing the officiating as “horrific”. Kasprowicz said many of the umpires’ howlers could be avoided.

“I would have loved to have had this as a player,” Kasprowicz said. “The ball can measure things like speed and spin rate, and has a whole lot of features that both grassroots and professional players will be interested in. We can get data about fielding, batting, wicketkeeping … the amount of data we collect is huge.

“This is going to take away the need for things like Snicko.”

Kasprowicz, a fast bowler, played 83 matches for Australia and is now a director of Cricket Australia, when he’s not busy toying with technology.

Jetson Industries founder Ben Tattersfield invented the ball on a fold-out table in his Brisbane ­garage after first trying his hand at creating a connected golf ball.

“I was knocked back by all the big golf manufacturers, because they sell to people who lose golf balls,” he said. “I decided to make a cricket ball instead, and we’ve built in telemetry that means the ball can do hundreds and even thousands of things when we will launch on day one.

“The sensors are built into the hardware and we’ll be able to build out lots of new features over time.”

He is confident the connected balls are match-ready, given they comply with international standards and the in-built technology doesn’t affect performance.

He said a partnership with tech giant Amazon Web Services meant he could grow the business from his shed to the point where it’s now ready to sell the balls in Australia and across the globe, with a particular focus on India.

“Without their cloud system it would have been really difficult to get my company global,” he said. “Two years ago I was in my ­garage and now this month we’re going to have balls in countries around the world; that really shows the power of technology.”

AWS commercial director for Australia and New Zealand Adam Beavis said the advent of cloud computing had meant it was far easier for company founders - even if they don’t have technical skills - to get their businesses up and running.

He pointed to research produced in conjunction with Deloitte Access Economics which found cloud technology has delivered $9.4 billion dollars in productivity benefits to the Australian economy in the past five years

“If you go back seven or eight years, let alone ten years, you would have to come up with the idea, find capital investment to get it going, find hardware to host it, then maintain and patch and secure that hardware. It was hard. If you look at what Jetson Industries has managed to do, they could just go to our website and go from there.”