Bill Carlton was at home in Malta as England slumped to defeat amid controversy at the Old Trafford Test against Pakistan.

TV replays showed that four batsmen were given out after the umpires failed to spot no-balls by the Pakistani bowlers.

It prompted England's chairman of selectors, David Graveney, to suggest that a tennis-style 'magic eye' system could be introduced to help prevent similar mistakes in future.

And that is where Carlton comes in.

The 87-year-old is the inventor of Cyclops - a system of infra-red beams which is used to help determine whether serves are good or too long at Wimbledon and other major tennis championships, including the US and Australian Opens.

The idea came to Carlton, a former aircraft engineer and inventor of the plastic shuttlecock, in 1979 and Cyclops was used at Wimbledon for the first time the following year.

And he is convinced the system could be adapted to determine whether bowlers have over-stepped the crease.

David Shepherd was caught out by TV replays

"It would take about six weeks to make a prototype. What we would need first and foremost is to know precisely what the rule is," he told BBC Sport Online.

The Cyclops box projects a horizontal array of five or six light beams across the court, 10 millimetres above the ground, and emits a loud beep whenever the ball breaks those beyond the service line.

The system is regularly refined and the mark 10 version, which is more resistant to being triggered by insects, has been in use at the US Open since 1996.

One of the main problems in using Cyclops - which takes four hours to install - on a cricket field would be where to put the box.

"The normal size is about 6cms high, about 45cms long and about 20cms wide. That would be a real nuisance on a cricket field.

"For a bowler's foot, you could make a much smaller box, but it would still stick up about two or three cms.

Cyclops can keep pace with Greg Rusedski's serve

"What we would have to do is make it so that if anyone treads on it, it would go down into the ground, like a cat's eye. I don't see any reason why we couldn't do that," Carlton explained.

The no-ball rule was not discussed at last month's meeting of the International Cricket Council's Cricket Committee-Playing, headed by Indian Test legend Sunil Gavaskar.

The committee meets on an annual basis and an ICC spokesman confirmed that even if suitable technology was available, it could not be used before September 2002.

Following events at Old Trafford, Graveney made it clear that he believes the time is right to use more technology to help umpires.

"Umpiring's an incredibly difficult job. You could have a situation as they have in tennis - why not have a magic eye so the umpire is merely concentrating on what's happening at the business end?" he commented.

Whether Cyclops fits the bill remains to be seen.

Carlton and his daughter Sarah have been defeated in his efforts to devise a system for football which would give a definitive ruling on whether the ball has crossed the goal-line.

He believes, however, that their ingenuity could meet the requirements of cricket law 24 (5), section two, which states: The bowler's front foot must land with some part of the foot, whether grounded or raised, behind the popping crease."

For cricket's administrators, the ball is now in their court.