The inevitable rise of technology in cricket

DRS is proving to be a controversial issue

Let me begin by stating the most characteristic features of engineers – they love to analyze and to criticize, all thanks to the numerous vivas and examinations they give only to be mocked at by their professors. Thus, cricket is a game towards which engineers develop a natural inkling. It gives us eight hours of action everyday over a period of five days, an opportunity for analysis which no other sport comes close to providing.

To add to this, the pitch, the weather conditions, the toss and the team composition provide enough fodder for several days of discussions. In order to repay this debt of enjoyment that cricket has brought into the lives of these engineers, they came out with a gift that the world today fondly calls – technology.

It began in 1982, in Australia with the instant video replay making its debut, thereby changing the way people looked at the game completely. The umpire’s reputation was at stake, with every decision made being subject to intense scrutiny with instant replays being shown on the big screens.

Run out and stumping decisions were the ones that the umpires got horribly wrong. With this piece of technology being touted as the next big thing in the domain of cricket viewing, the ICC was expected to lap it up instantly. But the ICC surprisingly refused to acknowledge the importance of this piece of technology and did not want to be the first sporting body to use science over human senses to make decisions.

Instead over a period of nearly ten years, they tried everything in order to justify the exclusion of technology. The introduction of neutral umpires in Test matches was one such move. Ten years after its maiden appearance and drawing severe criticism from the media and players, the TV umpire was born with Sachin Tendulkar being the first casualty.

Over the next fifteen years, in came the ultra slow-motion cameras and 3-dimensional life like computer graphics, giving birth to the hawk-eye, hot-spot and the snikometer. Television viewing had reached another level. Broadcasters could play with camera angles, enthralling viewers across the globe.

Cricket broadcasting had come a long way from the mere two cameras placed at either end. Nobody seemed to mind this apart from two gentlemen in hats and coats in the middle, who were constantly under the pump. Every move, every call, every expression came under this virtual eye.

The most respected officials on the field had become the new objects of ridicule and criticism with former cricketers sitting in the pre-match and post-match shows passing judgements regarding their incompetence, sometimes even blaming them for their team’s defeats. The engineers seemed to be having the time of their lives, having quietly given the game further scope of analysis and criticism. The technology march wasn’t going to stop. It was time the ICC incorporated it, before it was too late.

The plunge came in 2008, and it was India again to kick start a new phase in cricket. But this time the very existence of umpires on the field was being questioned. The Decision Review System or the DRS as it was popularly known, gave the players the authority to question an umpire’s decision.

Soon hotspot had also emerged, an invention that used infra-red technology to show heat from the friction created by any collision on the pitch, such as between ball and bat or pad. This along with hawk eye and sniko gave viewers the belief that the days of erroneous decisions was a thing of the past. But what transpired was far from this.

Technology which seemed a piece of cake in the studio suddenly felt ambiguous, and rules like ‘more than 50% of the ball must be hitting the stump to overturn the on field call’ among several others only complicated matters. But what made matters worse was the fact that technology could be tampered with.

Hotspot failed to detect faint nicks which came off bat stickers or even off well oiled bats. Hence invariably after the third umpire’s decision, either party always ended up disappointed. The very same people sitting in newsrooms, who earlier were criticizing the ICC over its failure to incorporate technology in aiding decision making were now, well criticizing the ICC again for taking out the human element from the game. The same technology which made great viewing on television, couldn’t simplify the umpire’s job.

Had engineers ruled the ICC, the human umpire would have been replaced a decade ago with a moving robot. The bats and balls would have been fitted with sensors to detect edges. But how much is too much? Does the cricket field have to become a testing laboratory, when it is a well known fact that technology will never be 100 percent accurate?

The greatest feature about any sport over the years has been its simplicity on the field. Can the constant intervention by machines keep this charm intact? Only time will tell. Probably there is a reason why engineers rarely become administrators. But with the World Cup round the corner, the probability that the ‘new and improved’ version of the DRS will rake up another controversy seems to be more likely than Suresh Raina succumbing to the short ball again.