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Captains okay greater use of technology

In a survey conducted by the ICC, technology has found favour with most international captains, who believe that it will result in better decision-making by umpires

Wisden Cricinfo staff
28-Aug-2004


Ricky Ponting's stand on technology is similar to his predecessors': he doesn't want any © Getty Images
In a survey conducted by the ICC, technology has found favour with most international captains, who believe that it will result in better decision-making by umpires. While some aspects of already existing technology were questioned, the general opinion was that umpires needed to have a load taken off their shoulders. Incidentally, the ICC's recent experiment with no-ball calls at the Videocon Cup was given a thumbs-up by the umpires.
The two dissenting voices came from Australia and Zimbabwe: Tatenda Taibu believed that "what's already there is enough", while Ricky Ponting felt that decisions were best left to the umpires.
Michael Vaughan was more vocal in its support, but also suggested that existing technologies needed to be looked at again. He also felt that the role of technology should not overshadow the role umpires played.
"In general, I am in favour of using new technology to assist the umpires as they only have a split second in which to make a decision which can be analysed over and over again," Vaughan said. "So I don't believe they should be the sole judge of all appeals."
"But I have reservations about the use of certain types of technology. I am not convinced, for example, that Hawkeye is always 100 per cent right on lbw decisions because the umpire in the middle is still the person who is best placed to judge how the pitch is behaving and what the ball is doing.
"That said, I do like the idea of using technology to highlight the wicket-to-wicket area on a pitch so the umpire can get a better idea as to whether the ball has pitched inside or outside the line of leg stump. I think that would really help eliminate some of the more obvious bad decisions when a batsman is given out when the ball has pitched outside the line of leg stump."
Inzamam-ul-Haq agreed with the idea of removing some load off the umpires, for they were prone to make tiny errors, and in international cricket, even small mistakes made a difference. "Yes, I'm very much in favour, because the game of cricket has become very professional, small errors have been affecting results. So much cricket is being played and umpires have been under tremendous pressure due to the heavy workload on them."
Graeme Smith, Stephen Fleming and Marvan Atapattu were a few of the other captains who favored more technology.