India take DRS decision upstairs
But England and Australia united in supporting DRS
LITTLE lip-reading skill was needed to understand the words Kevin Pietersen spat at the world as he stalked lonely as a dark cloud to the boundary at Old Trafford this week: “F***ing DRS!”
Moments before, Pietersen had been given out caught behind twice in the space of one delivery from Peter Siddle — once on the field by Tony Hill and again, on review, by Kumar Dharmasena, who could not find evidence to contradict Hill.
There had been no deviation as ball passed bat. No Hot Spot twinkled, except on the ball. There had, however, been a sound. Sometimes it really is hard being KP.
But did Hot Spot have the silicone pulled over its heat-seeking eyes? Silicone tape confuses thermal cameras by burying the evidence of impact.
And so the decision review system was dumped into the middle of another fine mess involving engineers in white coats fiddling with bats and balls in university laboratories, an England Cricket Board demand for an “explanation and an apology” from Channel Nine, and the rare phenomenon of solidarity between Ashes protagonists in an International Cricket Council release headlined: “England and Australia teams reiterate support for DRS”.
How the Board of Control for Cricket India must be laughing. “Told you so,” they would say if they were able to extricate themselves from their arrogance, “the damn thing does not work”.
Or would they? There are murmurs from Mumbai that the BCCI, hitherto implacably distrustful of DRS because it is — wait for it — fallible, are changing their minds.
The Indians have previously floated the unworkable idea that, for them to agree to use the system, the number of reviews should be unlimited.
But there is compromise in the air. What if, the BCCI’s new thinking apparently goes, teams were not docked a review when an onfield decision was upheld in deference to “umpire’s call”? The marginal decision would still stand, but the team that took their appeal upstairs would not waste a review.
Haroon Lorgat liked the sound of that: “Bearing in mind that the DRS was an initiative started from scratch and was always intended to be improved over time, I would be supportive of any changes that would enhance the system . . .”
Lorgat is world cricket’s most diplomatic administrator. He is also no mug. The BCCI are aghast that they have to put up with him as Cricket SA’s chief executive, having had a gutsful of his insistence, when he ran the ICC, on pettiness like respecting higher authority and not bullying the little guys.
But here was a chance to build a bridge between CSA and the BCCI. Besides, a good idea is a good idea, no matter from where it emanates. This, surely, was a good idea — why should teams be penalised for umpires’ quasi-errors?
Quick; someone get on the phone to the ICC and ask them to effect the change before India’s tour to SAnext summer . . .
Not so fast. The rest of Lorgat’s comment was “. . . provided the ICC also agrees”.
Ah. That would require a recommendation by the ICC cricket committee, approval by the ICC chief executives’ committee, and ratification by the ICC board. The chief executives next meet in Dubai on September 18 and 19, and no proposals to amend DRS regulations have yet been tabled.
The ICC cannot force their members to use DRS, but they can make the process of improving DRS complicated enough to dissuade attempts to do so.