DRS or Decision Review System has been one of the best additions to the game of Cricket. It has come as a relief to all players and fans around the world who have always looked at the replays and wished that the decision could have been corrected. After keeping it at an arm’s distance, even BCCI has finally accepted it and now using it in the IPL too. The ICC claims that the over 98 per cent correct decisions are being made after the implementation of the DRS. The excitement around reviews and the process is also another important factor that goes in its favour.
We know for sure that nothing is perfect and there is always scope for improvement. So, there are some questions that the ICC needs to answer. The biggest one is about: What’s the purpose of the technology of DRS: is it to check the acumen of Cricketer’s Decision making or to get right Decisions? This question arises from the fact that how we have only one review in ODI’s and T20 which is not adequate.
Sadly, The current system says the answer to the above question is the former one. It depends on the players and captain making a decision based on their hunch to review. It is not a system that wants to eliminate all the errors. The players like umpires only have seen the action in real-time and it’s quite impossible to make the decision within 15 seconds. While I understand that the 15-second rule was brought in to ensure that there is no time-wasting but it does add extra pressure on players. Also, we have seen that there are many batsmen and bowlers who feel entitled to use a review and sometimes end up wasting the review.
One unsuccessful review in ODI’s is very inadequate. Most of the times this review gets used up by the top order batsman and the lower order batsmen have nothing to fall back on. There are various examples of this happening across the teams. Even for the bowling team, it is quite possible that a keeper might miss out on a small under the edge of the bat in an LBW review and the team ends up without any referrals for a vast stretch of the match. In T20's, it is still acceptable to have just 1 review but 50 over cricket needs at least 2 Reviews per game.
Another recommendation that I would like to give would be to allow Umpires the power to review. This would enable them to seek help from the third umpire on difficult decisions. It could lead to all decisions being referred to thus, it needs to be limited to like 2 per innings. Another possibility is to have the kind of concept of VAR (Video Assistant Referee) in Football. We all have seen many times in the past that after a wrong decision is made, all the people in the stadium see the mistake on the big screen but nothing can be done about it. A system like VAR might help correct these types of mistakes but we do know that VAR has its own set of problems in its current form. But that's an all-new debate and let's leave it for another day.
The main question remains the same. What’s the use of keeping the technology and seeing that its a bad decision if you don’t overturn it? The Ultimate aim should be to get the right decision at any cost and eradicate any mistake from umpires as they are in the end Humans and would make an error. We all understand the pressure and the need to avoid interruptions and breaks in the already big game and the need to fit into the time slot and other compulsions by the broadcasters. But, then by limiting DRS usage to one unsuccessful review especially in ODI’s doesn’t help the cause for which the DRS was brought into the game. There is a need for ICC to look into this issue and decide what the real purpose of DRS is.
