Spider cam turning into a turn-off

Had it not been for MS Dhoni taking a rather tough skier off of Glenn Maxwell's top edge, Chennai Super Kings may not have walked away victors in their thrilling tie against Royal Challengers Bangalore on Monday night.

Maxwell was stroking the ball better than he has in a few years, and had already raced to 76 from 36 balls until Maheesh Theekshana incited a top edge in the 13th over. At the time, RCB were chugging along in their pursuit of 227.

Once the catch was taken, and Faf du Plessis fell similarly the next over, RCB's wheels came off.

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But Dhoni's first catch, which came in the wake of him dropping Du Plessis for nought, was not without its share of drama.

It was a tough enough catch given the lights, the height it assumed, the pressure of the situation and the noise at the M Chinnaswamy stadium, but add the spider cam to it, and it was truly remarkable that the former Indian skipper held on.

In fact, at one point it seemed like the ball had clipped one of the four cables the spider cam moves on because Dhoni had to make a late adjustment before the ball settled into his gloves. Dhoni did rush to the umpire, pointing towards the spider cam, possibly telling him to inform the operators to move it away from the pitch.

But had Dhoni revealed to the umpire that the ball had in fact touched any part of the spider cam or the cables, the umpire would have signalled a dead ball, and Maxwell would have continued to bat.

Without strong video evidence, it's tough to tell if the ball did touch the cable or not, but the spider cam is invasive enough, reckoned Devon Conway.

"It (interference) happened a couple of times where the ball had got very close to the spider cam as well as the wires, that can obviously put a fielder off. I think Faf stepped away a couple of times because the shadows of the spider cam were in his way. It's obviously a little bit testing for guys," said the man of the match.

"It's nice to have that technology to show different angles of the game but there comes a point where (it) can't get too involved and interfere with the game. MS (Dhoni) was probably trying to speak to the umpires, saying 'don't get too close to the action and try to avoid too much (of what's) going on," said Conway.