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.
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