Wicket to Wicket

Martin Williamson says in his post that he likes cricket to be "quirky, annoying and enthralling". Well, so do I. But I like the quirkiness and the unpredictability to come from the players, and not from the umpire.

Do you turn on the television to watch Sachin Tendulkar and Glenn McGrath strut their talents, or to see Steve Bucknor muff up yet another decision that you can talk about at the pub in the evening? Let me put it plainly: Bucknor exists not for our entertainment, but to make sure that he does justice to the efforts of Tendulkar and McGrath, and all the other players out there. Any tools that can help him do this well are welcome.

And Hawk-Eye is a rocking tool for this purpose. Martin refers to the "fair share of glitches" that Hawk-Eye has, and for both my edification and the readers' enlightenment, I request him to point out some of them. The only areas of doubt, which occur if the ball pitches too close to the bat, can be built into the system with the benefit going to the batsmen. But perhaps I am ignorant, and will be grateful if I am educated. If there are technological flaws in Hawk-Eye that go against my claim that it can give a better decision than the umpire in every instance of an lbw decision, I shall give up my claims for it.

Some of those who continue to bang on about the glory of technology and the need to embrace it have an irritating tendency to ridicule those who oppose it, portraying them as conservative Luddites who are incapable of embracing change. Technology used wisely is good. Used because it exists, it is not so wonderful.

As requested by Amit Varma, I read the article "The Perfect Solution Fallacy". Interesting. Not sure what relevance it has to this debate, but interesting. If we start discussing seat belts I will be sure to revisit it.

Seriously, the examples flagged are not relevant. Clearly, if implementing something, however flawed, can save lives then it is better than nothing at all. Few would disagree. But we are talking about cricket and not terrorism or drunken drivers.

I know I shouldn't be making two posts in a row in a debate, but I'll keep it short: I'd like to request the opponents of technology in umpiring, especially of Hawk-Eye, to read this.

I have a confession to make. I do not know how the insides of an aeroplane work.

Nor, for that matter, do I quite understand how a microwave functions, or how a computer works, or how on earth some words I type here in Mumbai can be read anywhere in the world almost instantly. I can't see any of these things happen with my own eyes, and neither can Sambit Bal, who flies much more often than I do, uses the microwave and has, after much coaxing, started blogging (with this blog). He is as comfortable with all of those things as I am. Why, then, is he wary of Hawk-Eye?

These are subjective matters, and Sambit is entitled to his doubts, but I find the particular reason he gives in his last post rather odd. He says that Hawk-Eye's accuracy isn't the issue with him, and he accepts that "it gets more lbw decisions right than the umpire". But he refuses to accept it because it works in a way that his "eyes can't see". But that is true of virtually all modern technology. Still, there are people scared of flying, for example, like Dennis Bergkamp. Bergkamp, it must be noted, doesn't stop others from flying.

I have the greatest regard for Bob Woolmer, both as a coach and an original thinker, and it is wonderful to have him in this discussion. He presents an insider’s view and his voice carries the biggest weight in this panel. But I still can't be persuaded out of my ambivalence. Let me elaborate my discomfort a bit more.

I have come to regard Hawk-Eye as reliable, and there is no doubt that in my mind that despite its margin of error, it gets more lbw decisions right than the umpire. I have no hesitation in immediately using it for line decisions for lbw appeals, just like tennis is likely to use it for line calls. In fact, it's a no-brainer. Umpires, who face ridicule on the basis of visual evidence provided by the television camera, should have access to that evidence in quick time. It must be done instantly and in an unobtrusive way. And I believe it can be done with a hand-held gadget without referring it to the third umpire.

But I have a problem with the second aspect of Hawk-Eye. After the ball hits the bat, the process is predictive. No doubt it is scientific, and I am inclined to believe that it’s far, far more accurate than the naked eye. But still, it is predictive. In case of all the line decisions the evidence is right before our eyes. In case of run-outs and stumpings, the bat is short of the crease; for lbws, we can see the ball pitch outside the leg stump, but for the path of the ball after it hits the pad, we need to rest our faith on a predictive technology. It's too much to ask for. Called me old fashioned, but even if you convince me that it's based on missile technology, I can't give my unconditional faith. For what my eyes can't see, I will accept the umpire's decision in the full knowledge that it is fallible.

I remember Ken Palmer (a former international umpire – and a good one) giving me out at Taunton caught behind. I knew categorically that I had missed the ball; in fact I was in the process of leaving the ball and as the bat hit the top of my pad and there was a noise. Noise brings appeal, and unfortunately for me Ken gave me out. I walked off pretty disappointed, especially as I was having a tough season with the bat. In the bar afterwards Ken said to me “What’s going on Bob? I thought you were a walker?” I said to Ken: “If I had hit it I would have walked.” “Not to worry,” he said, “it is all part of the game.”

This was long before technology, and players accepted the umpire’s decisions and there was an unwritten code for all players to walk when they knew they were out. Ian Chappell changed that mindset when he announced simply that the umpire is there to do a job and therefore let him make the decision. In an ideal world we would not need technology in cricket, but as Martin Williamson quite rightly said we do not live in an ideal world.

Since technology has slipped into cricket, the batsmen seem to have decided – subconsciously or consciously – “surviving a run-out appeal is now more unlikely, so I will hang around to see if I can get away with the others”. The majority of Australians would only have walked, as Eddie Barlow used to say, “when they ran out of petrol.”

In his post, Martin Williamson argues that once we go down the technology route, you must go the whole hog. I agree we must, and I’m sure we eventually will, but that doesn’t mean the shift from zero to hundred must happen in one single leap. Had that been the case, the third umpire would never have been introduced for line decisions, because at the time technology was nowhere close to coming up with a solution for lbws or caught-behinds.

The whole process of bringing technology into the fold of decision-making will be a gradual, step-by-step process, and in going down that route, the only question that needs answering is this: is technology more accurate than the human eye in getting that aspect of the decision right? If the answer is yes (obviously, without hindering the flow of the game too much), then we must give technology a chance.

Currently, technology isn’t conclusive in detecting inside-edges onto pad, but it does pretty much everything else very accurately in the case of lbws: Hawk-Eye’s tracking system predicts if the ball would have hit the stumps or not, while the mat on the pitch offers error-free information on whether the ball pitched in line or not. Combine the two, and technology has plenty to offer to help umpires get more decisions right than they currently do. As and when a foolproof system for detecting edges emerges, I’ll plump for adding that into the technology repertoire as well, but just because that aspect isn’t satisfactorily error-free, it shouldn’t mean we shun the other, more accurate aspects as well. The aim is to eventually achieve perfection – or come as close to it as possible – but it can only be achieved through small, continuous improvements, not a quantum leap.

In an ideal world, every umpire’s decision would be right … but we all know this is not an ideal world. Technology has been held up as the way to eliminate human error, and the experiments during the Super Test should have represented another step towards that. That it failed to inspire my colleague Amit Varma, one of its staunchest supporters, shows how badly it failed.

If you go down this route (and this argument assumes that replays for line calls, where the decision is almost always black and white, are rightly here to stay) then you have to go the whole hog. You can’t embark on a quest for perfection and stop short. That means Hawk-Eye for lbws, the Snickometer for edges … and anyone who has watched cricket on TV knows, that means more delays and even then, debate remains. There was more than one decision at Sydney where the umpires, using the same replays as the third umpire, came to a different conclusion. And as for the farce where the third official, unable to decide, referred back to the on-field umpire who gave the batsman out … come off it!

The main worry is that if you do remove the element of doubt, matches would be over in half the time. While bowlers might rejoice, batsmen would find their innings cut off much earlier. And given that money is so important to those at the top, shorter games are not an option … so don’t hold your breath for the changes to be rolled out anytime soon. But that’s no bad thing. One of the great things about sport is the uncertainty, the unfairness, and the hours of argument that gives us. And although it might be an old cliché, it is nevertheless true that decisions do even themselves out. Sure, individuals suffer – ask Damien Martyn – but nobody ever said sport was fair. And for every one that suffers, someone else benefits. Swings and roundabouts.

As Andrew Miller pointed out in his post, cricket at its best is a game of ebb and flow. Those ebbs and flows, though, are best left to the players to conjure up, not the officials. What were the most riveting moments in the Ashes? Glenn McGrath speeding in with gusto and exploiting the Lord’s slope? Shane Warne toiling away relentlessly with his bagful of magic balls, dragging Australia back in the contest match after match? Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones’s outstanding old-ball spells? Or Aleem Dar’s shocking error which cruelly cut short a gutsy rearguard act by Simon Katich?

For me it’s a no-contest. As a watcher, it’s frustrating and annoying to see outstanding cricket go unrewarded because of umpiring incompetence. It happened again and again and again on India’s tour to Australia in 2003-04, when Anil Kumble kept deceiving the batsmen with straight deliveries at the stumps, and was repeatedly denied legitimate lbws. It was frustrating not because the decisions were going against India, but because a good performance was being denied its due by poor officiating. India have benefited at other times, just as Australia were at the wrong end of the decisions during the Ashes. And the argument that it all evens out just doesn’t wash: repeatedly, games have turned on incorrect umpiring decisions. Sure, it makes for great post-match discussions, but ask Damien Martyn if that’s any compensation for those couple of shockers which contributed in ensuring that he may have played his last Test.

The argument often put forward by the anti-technologists goes like this: players make mistakes too, so why are umpiring errors blown up the way it is? Just accept them, and get on with it. Well, the point is, when players err, they pay for it: when a bowler bowls badly, he is smashed for runs; when a batsman plays a poor stroke, he pays for it with his wicket; when a fielder gets sloppy, his team pays for it. But when an umpire commits a blunder, he doesn’t cop the blow (at least not immediately), one of the teams do. That’s just plain unfair.

As anyone who watched agog during this summer’s unputdownable Ashes series will testify, cricket at its very best is a game of ebb and flow. No single incident can be deemed to have turned a match, precisely because – in a sport that is tussled over for five days straight – there is plenty time for a wounded side to right a perceived wrong.

If we are to accept this basic premise – and let’s face it, only the most one-eyed of partisans would prefer to watch a two-day rout ahead of a bumsqueaking cliffhanger a la Edgbaston 2005 – then to take the expression back to its tidal origins, we find ourselves one step short of saying: “what comes around goes around”. Which is where my argument against technology comes in.

It’s all too easy to get overly emotional about cricket. While England are winning back the Ashes, or while Sourav Ganguly is toying with Indian emotions like an electric violinist, it can seem like the most important thing on earth. But then, along comes a tragedy like the tsunami or the Kashmir earthquake, and you are jolted back to accepting the reality of sport. We love it because it is a break from the norm – a living and breathing metaphor for our everyday anxieties, but one that matters not a dickybird in the grander scheme of things. Last time I checked, Australia had not ceased to exist as of 6.15pm on September 12, 2005.