GOOD CHANGES
   Date :22-Jul-2019

 
THERE are two significant changes that would be welcomed by cricketers and teams alike. By a recent decision, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has resolved to use the Decision Review System (DRS) to put curbs on howlers made by on-field umpires during the upcoming Ranji Trophy championship. The second is the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) decision not to penalise the captain for slow over rate with suspension. Instead the ICC thinks that the onus of slow over rate should be put on the entire team and hence the entire team should shoulder the brunt of punishment for the shorfall. As a consequence of this new decision the entire team will be penalised by deducting points from the team’s tally. The experiment is being tried during the upcoming World Test Championship.
 
Thus, the BCCI’s decision to use the DRS in a limited manner, with the exclusion of the more sophisticated Hawke -Eye and UltraEdge, hopefully, would result in much reduction in the blunders committed by on-field umpires. It is a well known fact in the crikceting world that howlers by on-field umpires, even by the most accomplished and experienced of them, have led to change in the course of a match, altering match results very drastically. It is for this reason that the ICC has introduced the use of technology to minimise umpiring errors so that no injustice is done to any team.
 
Of course some of the senior Indian players and the BCCI have had their reservations on the efficacy and accuracy of DRS in avoiding errors in the past but have reluctantly agreed to abide by ICC’s directives on the matter. Now all the bilateral international series are conducted under the watch of DRS with lesser number of complaints about umpiring errors or even favouritism or partisan rulings. But of course that does not mean that complaints have entirely vanished from cricketing books. Errors may be occuring, but may be few and far between. Of course efforts are still being made to remove whatever glitches there may be in the technology to make it more reliable.
 
That seems to be the reason that a reluctant BCCI has decided to use technology during its domestic schedule. That also sadly reflects on the quality of domestic umpiring. In this regard, the example of Cheteshwar Pujara being the beneficiary of umpiring benevolence twice and Karntaka failing to qualify for the Ranji Trophy final because of series of blunders by umpires during the Ranji semi-final match between Saurashtra and Karnataka last year are being cited. This is the reason why not many umpires from the country are on the ICC’s elite list of international umpires. That indeed is a very poor commentary.