BWF Responds To Indonesian Badminton's Public Anger About Hawk-Eye Incident That Hurts The Minions

Minions versus Malaysian couple (Source: Antara)

JAKARTA - The Badminton World Federation (BWF) has issued an official statement apologizing to the Indonesian men's doubles Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo/Marcus Fernaldi Gideon who suffered losses due to the Hawk-Eye evaluation error in the semifinals, Saturday, November 20.

"All parties involved acknowledge that there was an operational error generated by Hawk-Eye Innovations, which resulted in an error in displaying data from the recorded images that have been examined," BWF wrote on its official website, Sunday, November 21.

The incident occurred when the Minions, who played Ong Yew Sin/Teo Ee Yi of Malaysia, recorded a score of 18-20 in the first game. At that time, the Malaysian player threw a challenge because he felt the ball hit the front line.

In the Hawk-Eye graphic display, Ong's ball can be seen hitting the line so points are awarded to Malaysia. But Kevin, who clearly saw that the ball fell quite far from the line, immediately threw a protest that was ignored by the main referee.

Based on the replay footage, it appears that the ball fell off the line. This has also led to criticism from other players and the public in cyberspace.

As a result of this error, the Minions were forced to lose in the first game with a score of 18-21. But they avenged the defeat by winning the next two games and securing a ticket to the final round.

"That's a thousand percent wrong, there was an error. The exit was far away (from the line), but points were counted. Even though the opponent only admitted it, they admitted to me that it was wrong," Kevin said at a press conference Saturday, November 20.

Kevin also demanded that BWF conduct a Hawk-Eye inspection and make improvements so that similar incidents do not happen again. Hawk-Eye Innovations, as the operator of the match system, also admitted that the error caused the loss of players in the match, and they apologized for the incident.

"We take this incident very seriously and will conduct a full review to ensure this does not happen again," Hawk-Eye wrote.