Be a sport about new technology

Perhaps the first application of the decision review system came long before the advent of slow motion video camera or Snickometers. Legend has it that the great WG Grace, given out early to a leg before wicket appeal, turned to the offending bowler and said: “They have come to see me bat, not to see you bowl. Play on.” And play on they did.

There has been much acrimony engendered by accusations that Australian captain Steve Smith intentionally cheated by looking for guidance from the pavilion on whether to call for the DRS to be brought into play after being given out during the second Test against India in Bangalore.

Technology has unarguably changed the face of cricket over recent years with new innovations forcing even the biggest lame duck in sports administration, the ICC, to draft regulations on what may and may not be stowed in a player’s cricket bag.

But it is not just in the realm of cricket that the ability to computerise virtually every aspect of any game can be analysed, weighed and improved, literally grafting the hi-tech training in front of a video screen onto the natural skills of the sportsmen and sportswomen.

Golf authorities have waged war for years about the computer-generated designs employed in clubs and ball development. Largely these have been in the way of catch-up as technology outstripped the ability of the people with outdated printed rule books to comprehend the revolution happening around them.

Nick Price was one of the early victims. “My driving used to be my big advantage,” he said. “Then along they come with a kettlebraai on a stick and they’re all knocking it past me.”

Another was Bjorn Borg. He played his whole career – bar tournaments in America where he had a different contract – with a wooden-frame Donnay racket, and as the holder of 11 Grand Slam singles titles, used that piece of equipment very successfully indeed. Today, no one – bar someone versed in fairly recent tennis history – would recognise an old Donnay lurking in a dusty second-hand shop as the cutting edge ancestor of the shiny composite rackets of today.

Still, resisting change is a self-defeating process. And not everyone has the imperious chutzpah of a WG Grace.