The flaw is <i>not</i> the charm

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.

Which brings us to the other argument: life is unfair, so why should cricket be any different? Well, life isn’t always fair, but that doesn’t mean we don’t strive to change it, to make it less unfair wherever, and however, we can. If technology can help reduce the inequity on a cricket field, then why not?

The question, then, is how should it be done. Amit Varma has written enough about Hawk-Eye (1, 2 and 3) – and I’ve seen how it works myself (1 and 2) – to suggest that eventually, at some future date, it will be used by the on-field umpires. But in the meantime, was the experiment during the Super Series such a disaster? Less than five minutes were spent per day on referrals, and it did help umpires make the right verdicts. A couple of times the umpires didn’t refer when they should have, and ended up blundering, which was the fault of the umpires, not of technology. The third umpire is often called in to decide if a fielder made a clean save – often a matter of a run or two. Surely, a batsman being out or not out is a far more important decision, and the umpires deserve all help they can get in helping them get it right. Why not allow them to use technology to check where the ball pitched, in case of lbw verdicts? That’s clearly a line decision, in which technology will offer a conclusive verdict almost every time.

For me, the charm of the game isn’t compromised at all by removing the human element from decision-making – the 22 (or 24) human beings who play the game bring in enough human element. If anything can be done to ensure that they get just rewards for their flair and skills, then I’m all for it.