Line-call failure came after camera was 'switched off by mistake'

Wimbledon's electronic line-calling failure on Sunday came after an operator unintentionally switched off a set of cameras on Centre Court with one computer click, it is understood.

- Emine Sinmaz

Bosses earlier defended the new system as they continued to blame Sunday's seven minutes of chaos on human error.

Sally Bolton, the chief executive of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, rejected the suggestion that human line judges should have been brought back in when the system was "inadvertently deactivated" for six minutes and 49 seconds, missing three calls in one game.

It can now be revealed that the embarrassing failure came after an operator unintentionally unticked on a computer screen one set of cameras that monitored a part of Centre Court. The Hawk-Eye technology has now been overhauled so that cameras cannot be turned off when the system is operational.

Sunday's malfunction came at a crucial stage of the fourth-round match between Briton Sonay Kartal, 23, and the Russian veteran Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, 34, when the system did not flag that a shot from Kartal was out.