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Definitive guide to DRS alternatives

22nd November, 2015
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Leaving DRS in the hands of the umpires would be ridiculously inexpensive. (AAP Image/Paul Miller)
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22nd November, 2015
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Late on the final day of the first Test between Australia and New Zealand, Brendon McCullum was on the wrong end of an incorrect decision that he was unable to overturn because the New Zealand team had run out of reviews.

As usual, this initiated a hubbub of debate about the best way to use technological advances to maximise the number of correct decisions in the game.

Here are the pros and cons of the DRS system and its various proposed alternatives.

Current system
Umpires make decisions. Players can call for a review, but once they’ve reviewed incorrectly two times, they may not review again. At least, not until the 80th over of the innings, when teams receive a fresh batch of reviews to stuff up.

With a handful of minor refinements this has been the way DRS has worked since time immemorial (i.e. 2009), and traditionalists are naturally resistant to seeing it change. Do we really want to see the form of the game in which Shane Watson made his indelible mark overhauled? At what price progress, people?

A system designed to prevent ‘howlers’ (originally defined as ‘being incorrectly dismissed by a werewolf’), the current DRS model has instead evolved into a mini-game all of its own, with the savvy use of reviews now considered a critical skill for captains, bowlers and wicketkeepers to master.

Pros: Simple to understand, unless Mark Taylor is explaining it.

Cons: Can still result in obviously incorrect decisions not being overturned. (Although we do all get to sneer condescendingly and say ‘well, they shouldn’t have wasted their reviews, should they?’. And that’s kinda fun, isn’t it?)

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No reviews lost for umpire’s call
Umpires make decisions. Players review in the same way as the current system, but for lbw decisions, if the ball-tracking system comes back with an ‘umpire’s call’ result, the review wouldn’t be lost.

Every time Eagle Eye (nee Hawk Eye) returns an ‘umpire’s call’ verdict on an lbw review, the inevitable cry goes up that teams shouldn’t lose one of their reviews in that scenario.

“Come on, brochachos!” is the essence of the claim. “They weren’t exactly wrong. They just weren’t quite right enough to overturn the decision. Can’t we therefore find a middle ground between changing the umpire’s decision and losing a review for being wrong?

“After all, isn’t life itself nothing more than an endless series of murky shades of grey rather than a remorseless black and white dichotomy?”

Proponents of this argument, getting all philosophical on us there.

Pros: Will enable captains to review for every borderline lbw call without fear of losing their reviews.

Cons: Will enable captains to review for every single goddamn borderline lbw call without fear of losing their reviews.

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Umpires review everything
Umpires make decisions. Players don’t review them. Instead, the on-field umpires call for reviews on decisions they’re unsure about.

For many, a fundamental flaw of DRS is the whole notion of players challenging umpire decisions in the first place. It’s not the way the game is meant to be played. The umpire’s decision is supposed to be final. Not final unless somebody puts their arms in the shape of a T.

So why not let the umpires decide on whether or not to review close decisions?

Apart, of course, from the fact that they’d waste all day reviewing 99 per cent of their decisions. And then still have Murphy’s Law ensure that one of the one per cent they didn’t review be one that turned out to be wrong.

Pros: Players would no longer be burdened with the responsibility of calling for reviews.

Cons: Ha ha ha! Of course not. Players wouldn’t officially be calling for reviews, but you can guarantee every single decision they didn’t like would still see them furiously demanding a review.

Third umpire overrules wrong decisions
Umpires make decisions. Players don’t review them. Instead, they will instead be reviewed in real time by the third umpire.

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Similar to the previous model, except that the third umpire would review every decision in real time, overruling any that can be proven to be wrong before the next ball is bowled.

In this model, the third umpire is presumably played by a computer wizard with skills on par with Link from “The Matrix” movies.

Pros: On-field umpires do their jobs normally and only the most obvious mistakes spotted by the third umpire are overturned.

Cons: Dude, we can’t even get sight screens moved without wasting 17 minutes of game time. What makes you think we can get something this complex operating smoothly?

No DRS
Umpires make decisions. Nobody reviews them. Except for everybody watching on television.

Pros: Ridiculously inexpensive.

Cons: We would no longer experience that delicious burst of schadenfreude whenever an Indian batsman is given out incorrectly.

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Penalties for bad usage
Umpires make decisions. Every decision where the batsman is given out is reviewed by the third umpire. Conversely, if the bowling team wants to review a not out decision, they can do so, but if the decision is not overturned, the bowling team has penalty runs scored against them.

This model theoretically avoids all howlers. If the bowling team is sure enough that the umpire is wrong, they can review any decision they like, no matter how many times they’ve got it wrong before. But using reviews frivolously comes at a cost. Which – added bonus! – also means that fewer marginal decisions would be reviewed.

Pros: Adds a new form of penalty run, to go along with balls hitting fielder’s helmets, balls being rubbed on trouser pocket zippers and balls being secretly swapped out with water balloons (obscure).

Cons: Captains might not risk the penalty runs of reviewing a decision even if they believed it to be incorrect. Which would then give us the opportunity to laugh at their shameful cowardice. So, not all bad, surely?

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