What next for DRS?

Legend has it that the great Imran Khan once declared in his playing days that if he had fellow-greats Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev in his team he could beat any team in world cricket. Legend also has it that the irrepressible Gavaskar’s response to that was to declare that he could beat any team in world cricket as well – all it required was two Pakistani umpires in the game.

Not that such talk was limited to Pakistani umpires alone – visiting teams to India have been known to go away complaining about the poor standard of umpiring in India. Indian fans will swear that Sri Lankan umpires played a role when Sri Lanka hosted and beat India for their first test series win. Wisden was moved to begin its match report with a mention of the eight LBWs that went against the visiting Indians at Adelaide in 1992, quite a few of which were down to a debutant umpire, Darrell Hair. Umpiring again distorted “real” perspectives as to the outcome of a match, this time at Sydney in 2008, where a slew of poor umpiring decisions made headlines. And in his autobiography Sunil Gavaskar described umpire David Constant as being constant in his support of the England team. 

As the quality of cricket coverage on TV has improved, umpiring has become as much a talking point as the rest of the game. In keeping with their objective of getting TV viewers more involved in the game, broadcasters have turned to innovations like snickometer, ball path prediction (as provided by HawkEye and VirtualEye), and the most recent innovation, Hot Spot. These, in turn, have not only got viewers involved, but have also driven cricket towards its most significant change on the playing field – the introduction of the Decision Review System (DRS). The significance of DRS is not so much in that it greatly increases the role of technology – the change is more from a purist’s point of view in that it allows players to challenge an umpire’s decision, hence altering one of the most fundamental tenets of the game. The use of the term “review” could well be considered euphemism and sugar-coating in equal measure.

As is only to be expected, DRS evokes a wide range of reactions – from its most ardent of proponents, to its most trenchant of critics, and to those who are somewhere in between. The likes of Tony Greig remain the most visible – and unabashedly vocal – of the advocates of DRS, who not only bat for the mechanism but also make no secret of their dislike of its opponents. And while the likes of the BCCI oppose the DRS, there is a larger collection of the somewhere-in-between group, the most significant representative of which remains, strangely enough, the ICC, as it vacillates between the need to keep the various stakeholders of world cricket in good humour – including umpires, who possibly will endure the most pressure from DRS, and the players, the people who are most immediately impacted by how the use of DRS impacts umpiring decisions – and implementing a mechanism which is seen as being consistent and reliable.

It is a combination of these attributes – consistency and reliability – which could well hold the key to the future of the DRS, and its acceptability over the long term.

Of the two challenges facing the ICC when it comes to DRS, consistency might yet prove to be the lesser.

It is possible to argue that consistency should not be a challenge for DRS, which is a technology centric mechanism. After all, technology can generally be expected to produce consistent results when the inputs remain the same.

However, the recent India-England series provided two examples which helped demonstrate the importance of consistency even when technology is in use – in the two cases in question TV umpires arrived at completely different decisions based on almost similar evidence in cases of referred catches against VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid. If the whole idea of introducing DRS was to eliminate such cases, a consistent approach to interpreting the available evidence has to be the starting point. The right decision was made in both cases but imagine the brouhaha if one or both of those decisions were to be subsequently proven incorrect.

DRS shifts the responsibility for the final decision from the umpire on the field to the TV umpire. If, in doing so, it is unable to eliminate the perceived inconsistency which led to the clamour for a review system in the first place, it would not represent a step forward – it would merely have the effect of replacing on field human inconsistency with technological inconsistency, and the blame for bad decisions would move from humans to machines.

However, while this need for consistency is real and needs attention, DRS’ bigger challenge remains the reliability - or otherwise - of the tools it uses. In fact, the reliability of the tools holds the key to the credibility of DRS. And ball path prediction remains the one technology within the DRS suite which generates the maximum debate in this regard.

If Sachin Tendulkar was one of the early beneficiaries in the 2011 World Cup of the sometimes baffling results ball path prediction produces, Ross Taylor and Phil Hughes were among the more high profile cases of batsmen who seem to have got a bad deal from the technology. Worryingly, in the case of the Ross Taylor dismissal, there was also talk about how the cameras predicting the ball path "lost" the ball - not the most comforting endorsement of a much-touted technology.

However the biggest and most significant concerns over the reliability of ball path prediction are likely to persist until the technology can successfully pass the definitive test of its accuracy - the clean bowled.

In a World Cup 2011 match that  will be remembered for the dramatic manner in which South Africa were knocked out by New Zealand, JP Duminy was bowled by Nathan McCullum when he misread and missed a straight one. However the ball path prediction of that dismissal, still available on some websites, shows the ball turning a long way and missing leg stump - a baffling result, considering Duminy was bowled off-stump.

In a sense, being able to produce the exact same results as the real action in the case of bowled dismissals will hold the key to ball path prediction gaining credibility and acceptability. Indeed, the question of whether the predicted path of the ball, in case of LBWs, can be accepted without question is closely linked to how successfully and accurately ball path prediction is able to mimic clean bowled dismissals – it will remain, possibly, the final frontier for the likes of Hawk Eye and Virtual Eye.

The question of reliability is not limited to ball path prediction alone. The decision against Dravid in England was a case of the TV umpire rejecting the evidence presented by technology to make a decision, and hence casting doubts on the reliability of the technology itself. 

Eventually though, the DRS question is one with several dimensions – but establishing the tools of DRS as being consistent and reliable has to be the first step in ensuring greater acceptance of DRS.

The idea behind getting the TV umpire to review replays to conclude if the on-field umpire’s decision holds is a fundamentally sound one – as evidenced by how dramatically it has altered the accuracy of stumped and run-out decisions. Using technological aids to assist the third umpire appears to be just as sound, and a very important complement to DRS. But for DRS to shake off the perception that it is, as Joel Garner described it, a technology gimmick and eventually get to a stage where it has universal acceptance will take a combination of perseverance, ironing out the current irritants with the technology and, as with all new ideas, a lot of selling before the naysayers and the radicals can agree that it is good for the sport.

It has to be either that, or no DRS.


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Give the players their due

Now is not a great time to be an Indian cricket fan. The team went to England and were beaten 4-0 in the Tests and with it lost their standing as the #1 Test team – and the final series score dropped them to #3 by the end of the series.

This was followed by a similar result in Australia in the Tests which preceded an indifferent tri-series where, despite being the defending holders, India's relatively younger squad failed to make the finals. India also failed to reach the finals of the Asia Cup, after losing one of their three league matches to eventual runners-up, Bangladesh.

Yet, while the recent results are enough to crush the hope of even the most optimistic of fans, the situation was nowhere near as bleak a little over an year back. After a crushing defeat in the first Test India came back to win the second against South Africa and played out a draw against the fiery pace bowling Steyn-Morkel combo to finish a testing series with honours even. This was followed by a long-awaited win at the World Cup and, for a while, India were world one-day champion and the top ranked test team at the same time. As always happens with success, the men who got the team there were feted, celebrated and hailed, rightly, as having heralded a new era in Indian cricket.

However, as is inevitable in all sport the highs of success have been followed by the lows of loss.

Just as inevitably a nation, led by an often rabid and capricious media, has turned on the players and the team - with ferocity, scorn and possibly a degree of perverse delight at their decline.

Suddenly the batting line up is being dismissed as being home wicket bullies, Dhoni’s Test captaincy has been described as unimaginative, and his credentials for the role are being questioned. Greg Chappell has not only described India’s cricket team as disinterested in Test cricket and only interested in the money that the IPL offers, but he has suddenly become a self-appointed authority on India’s “culture” with a description which borders on calumny. Ian Chappell, generally not given to hyperbole, has proffered the view that the amount of money India’s cricketers make has dulled their motivation or hunger for the game.

While unhappiness is understandable and the criticism for recent failures is well-earned, such sweeping generalisations are unfair to the players.

Some of India's Test wins in recent times and the best of those have come when this same set of batsmen played a huge role in those successes, often providing the bowling the platform for a win.

The list of successes bears mentioning – Perth 2008, Adelaide 2003/4, Galle 2008, series wins in New Zealand and England, South Africa 2011. All these wins came when India's batting and bowling combined to turn in match winning performances. These have meant, in turn, that the reputation of this batting line up as one of the strongest in the world - and possibly the strongest - was earned through sheer weight of results. In addition, India’s younger generation has had some impressive results – in addition to winning the 2007 World T20, this team also won the previous edition of the India-Australia-Sri Lanka Tri-Series. They held a 2-1 lead in the away ODI series against South Africa last year, despite missing some key players to injury and have generally given a good account of themselves in the shorter formats of the game.

The past successes of India’s cricket teams demonstrate that the players who make up these teams have the talent and the pedigree to be able to compete with the best in the sport and win. If achieving success and attaining the #1 status requires tremendous focus and perseverance, retaining that position is considered at least as demanding, and probably more challenging. India’s Test team did a creditable job of first attaining the #1 status and then retaining it, not just in the face of stiff competition from teams like South Africa, but also despite having their credentials constantly questioned by cricketing media, former cricketers, and in some cases by their own opponents.

So what happens next to India’s cricket? If now is the time to reflect upon their past achievements and make allowance for their present travails, what does the future hold? While the future of Indian cricket will only unfold as time goes by, Indian cricket stands on the brink of major change – Rahul Dravid has retired, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman may follow him soon, and on the bowling front, Zaheer Khan might well be heading into retirement before very long.

But all this does not take away from the fact that the very same cricketers who are the subject of much derision right now have given it their all to win for the team and country. And, as they head into retirement, or prepare to do so, now is the right time to thank them for their contributions to the success of Indian cricket, and for such precious moments like Kolkata 2001, Adelaide 2003, Mumbai 2011 – even if all of them did not play the last one – and to acknowledge that their efforts have given us much joy and pride as cricketers.

And when they decide to hang up their boots, the most appropriate send-off would be to thank them for their contributions and to acknowledge their role in some of Indian cricket’s biggest successes.

Eventually it would mean giving the players their due instead of taking a here-and-now short term approach. The latter sells, but the former is the real test of how India’s fans stack up against CLR James’ “what do they know of cricket who cricket only know?”


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Rahul Dravid - A fan's tribute

It has been just over a week since Rahul Dravid announced his retirement from all cricket. And inevitably there is no dearth of tributes, all thoroughly well-deserved and which paint the picture of a great batsman, a good friend, and of a man who played such a pivotal role in Indian cricket’s emergence as a major cricketing force.

However, while a lot of what is written – particularly pieces by Ed Smith and Sambit Bal – provides a glimpse into Dravid from close quarters, the closest that fans get to players in cricket-mad India is on TV, the occasional tweet and when one reads notes like the ones above.

We cannot claim any such proximity with Rahul Dravid – except if “reports” about a little kid in the family, now a teenager, then still a chubby one-year old (circa 1997), being photographed with Rahul Dravid who happened to be in the neighourhood to greet a contest winner, count as genuine proof of proximity.

So, a fan’s view of Rahul Dravid, as with most other cricketers, is limited to the occasional piece – like Dravid’s tribute on Laxman’s 100^th Test appearance, or his Bradman oration – which provides but a fleeting glimpse into the person behind the sportsman, to borrow an overused cliché. But where one does not get to meet these cricketers in person, a lot can still be observed about sportsmen by looking at how they conduct themselves on the field.

So what did Rahul Dravid come across to the average TV watching cricket fan as when he played? Selfless team player? Uncompromising competitor? Very fit sportsman? A player who treasured the India cap? An ambassador for cricket, who genuinely respected the spirit of cricket? And off it – an almost scholarly man, whose Bradman Oration was one for the ages? Yes, to all of those.

And in the recent England series where India crashed to the first of their two successive 0-4 defeats overseas, Dravid showed each of these qualities in abundance. In agreeing to open the batting when India were missing the services of their regular openers through injury he was selfless. In waging singlehanded battle with England quicks and placing great value on his wicket he was being the fierce competitor Indian cricket has to come to expect of him. And in talking to MS Dhoni over the Ian Bell run out – valid under the laws of cricket, but arguably skirting the edge of the spirit of cricket, Dravid displayed each of these qualities in ample measure. In a sense, England was his real final series – the series where Dravid led the way for not just Indian cricket but also for Test cricket in general as he displayed cricketing skill and behavior which is so rapidly dissipating in an increasingly boorish sport.

But the real impact of Rahul Dravid remained that as a #3 – and with his retirement a score-line of 10/1 for India in an away Test match will have a much different feel to it from now on – we will miss that old familiar feeling of looking at the scoreboard and realizing that all was well since Dravid was still one of the two batsmen doing battle for India. The next #3 will step into a very large pair of boots, though the person who steps into the slot Sachin Tendulkar will probably have it much harder, if only for the weight of expectations.

Dravid’s batting was not merely about a fighting cricketer – it was also about his monumental concentration. The ability to cocoon himself and play his own game while a whole lot would be happening around – either a flurry of boundaries or the fall of quick wickets. Every sportsperson has to enter that zone where the crowd, the match situation and the opponent do not matter and where the class of the competition demands that batting, bowling, fielding or whatever else the sportsperson does is instinctive. Dravid typified that approach, with his ability to modify his batting approach to suit the challenges of Test cricket – where bowlers have time to work on a batsman one ball at a time, and where wearing down the opposition remains such a valuable skill. At the same time Dravid has shown himself able, and willing, to try a different set of shot choices in one-day internationals, and as he has demonstrated at the IPL, at T20 as well. That he has played the game for so long and finished with such staggering figures tells the story of how he used concentration as his weapon to bat his team into a position strength and the opposition into being worn out. And yet it appeared that if Dravid did not play the more extravagant scoop shots or reverse sweeps, it was not because he did not know how to play them.

Nothing symbolises Dravid’s ability to bring his best out when India were with their backs to wall than the Ahmedabad Test against Sri Lanka in 2009. On a slightly nippy morning the Sri Lankan quicks reduced India to 32 for 4 and it required Dravid to bail India out. The match was a typical draw but a 2-0 series win gave India the World No.1 ranking in tests. That one innings of defiance from Dravid went a long way in giving India the top sport for the next eighteen months. And it is this toughness we have gotten used to over the last 16 years.

“Finally I would like to thank the Indian cricket fan, both here and across the world. The game is lucky to have you and I have been lucky to play before you. To represent India, and thus to represent you, has been a privilege and one which I have always taken seriously.” – these were Dravid’s parting words in his retirement press conference. So what does Rahul Dravid finally mean to the Indian cricket fan – the faceless #3 who came out to bat before the exciting stroke-players or the gritty determined batsman who buckled down when the going got tough and dug India out of a hole time and time again? One fervently hopes the Indian fan is discerning enough to realise it is the latter but if his true worth is to be known only in his retirement then so be it. Dravid’s contributions to Indian cricket will never diminish.

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Taking the joy out of cricket - the media way

Time was when Star News was one of India's most popular news channels - that was when there were fewer news channels on air and the amount of choice available did not turn away viewers due to excess. 

And in India where cricket was never too far from the headlines,  this channel chose its own, uniquely crass way to grab viewers. After every match – Test or one-day – this channel would run a programme titled Match ka Mujrim. Its objective? To single out the player most culpable for his team’s loss and to declare him “guilty” – as a court of law would a mujrim, the Urdu word for accused.

The programme may not have been a lynch mob - but that was only because the hosts, the special guests, who sometimes included people like Bishen Singh Bedi, the in-studio viewers, and the millions watching were not armed to the teeth and they did not have anyone to physically lynch.

That apart, it was merely a question of vying for how much scorn could be heaped on the players and the mujrim, before declaring him guilty. It was tabloid TV media at it basest, and it was shameful. 

Star News probably does not run MKM any longer. But it has been replaced more than adequately by a wide variety of media that now do their utmost – often under the veneer of respectability –  to take the common cricket fan's joy out of watching the sport. And this trial-by-media has helped a lot of people see the “real” side of the same cricketers who they thought so highly of as the now ex-players throw their love of the sport to the winds and openly display their prejudices. 

Tony Greig's twitter account is one such example – a window into his mind, and one that leaves you with the disconcerting thought that this man was once arguably one of the most popular TV commentators in India – his present inability to distinguish those at the BCCI which he has no love for, from Indian cricket, its most loved players and eventually Indians who he is perpetually baiting, makes one wonder if there was more than just pre-season sabre-rattling to his "we will make them grovel" boast. 

Another interesting insight into the media's rabble-rousing over cricket can be found in Malcolm Conn's "rabble without redeeming features" piece. Conn wrote that the day before India scripted an astonishing assault to chase down 321 runs with twenty balls of the required 40 overs they needed to do it in, to have a mathematical chance of making the CB Tri-Series finals in Australia.

In that piece Conn, with no attempt at subtlety, portrayed Indian cricketers as free to go back home and wallow in their moneybags. Conn proceeded to lay into India's cricket players, claiming they lacked respect for the spirit of the game. Conn was offering this about a team has, in recent times, displayed the ability to place spirit above self-interest, even in the hardest of times. Whether it was the Dravid inspired decision to call back Ian Bell in the midst of the England mauling, or the Tendulkar inspired one to withdraw an appeal against Thiramanne, they were both decisions where India's cricketers could have stood their ground, and the laws of cricket would have been with them. That they did not take those options – despite the difficult times they were in – is testimony to their respect for the spirit of the game - an appreciation of which Conn was so obviously lacking in. It is probably in keeping with the tabloid spirit that Conn wrote that piece while being fully aware of the above incidents.  

The examples are endless - and all written from an Indian perspective, but they would, one suspects, be universally applicable.

What this all results in is a distaste for the political cesspool that cricket media is rapidly becoming. On one of the endless reruns a cricket channel ran of Sunil Gavaskar's 221 at the Oval in 1979, it is heartening to hear the commentator describe him as "the great Sunil Gavaskar" in a tone that mixes respect with admiration. That was the genteel, old-fashioned form of commentating upon and enjoying cricket. In those days, cricket did not have the endless jibes that text commentary reserves for Sreesanth today - the kind of twaddle that is written about the bowler by commentators makes one wonder whether these people have any respect for or inkling of what it has taken a cricketer to get there.

Today, though cricket has become about excess, it has become about a media that is both elitist and gutter at the same time. It has become about crusades and how "smart operators" have learnt to "leverage" the medium (“exploit” is just too crude a word, you see). 

People like Ian Chappell, not necessarily the most shy with a viewpoint, or the late Peter Roebuck represent a fast depleting breed who comment about cricket, its players, and its periphery without fear or favor. They do not come across as people with an axe to grind – instead their views seem to be rooted in what cricket stands for – which, in itself, is a quaint old-fashioned view of cricket. Not all their viewpoints find universal acceptance, but it is rarely, if ever, that they could be accused of the parochialism – commercial, dogmatic, or bigoted - that seems to characterize so much cricket writing. 

Such say-it-like-it-is commentary that is fast killing the enjoyment of cricket. The stuff that gets flung at viewers, readers and listeners alike is like an old video game, where the character in the game has to avoid the missiles which are being thrown at him to reach his destination. Likewise, it is possible to empathize with the average cricket fan for the constant assault of politics-passed-off-as-opinion that he has to endure while attempting to enjoy the little things that make cricket. 

It is this which takes the joy out of cricket and reduces it to a meaningless jumble of tweets, hype, politics and rubbish, and unless something changes, it is the very same media that will eventually drive the fans away from the sport.

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