I am ecstatic with the news that the Decision Review System (DRS) will not be in place for the Australia versus India Test series.
While I must admit to a sense of some unease at the political machinations by which the two nations have arrived at this point, it is nonetheless a good outcome for players and fans.
Four Test matches without the DRS will be a rare look back to a time before marketeers and administrators tried to strangle the spontaneity out of sport. It will be a series in which we can fondly remember how cricket was played, before it feel victim to the tyranny of administrative perfectionism.
This was a time when out meant out, and not out meant not out. When an LBW decision was given and the players and fans celebrated, without waiting pensively for an indeterminate number of seconds to have passed while the batsman mulled over a review.
There is no question that the Decision Review System means that there are fewer mistakes made by officials.
However, it does not guarantee every decision is right, nor does it guarantee every reviewed decision is definitely right, as Ross Taylor would have no doubt attested after the first innings in Hobart. It merely increases the percentage.
Percentages are the lifeblood of the administrator. Figures such as these allow someone of limited imagination or passion for the game to reduce it to a numerical equation, which can be adjusted by pulling the levers.
Unfortunately for these micro-managers, mistakes will always happen, and inevitably they even out. Those in favour of the DRS will point to Nathan Lyon, and by extension Australia, being given a temporary reprieve by a review in the dramatic closing stages at Bellerive Oval.
What a brave new era, they proclaim. Cricket saved from the indignity of incorrect decisions deciding matches.
However, incorrect decisions are a part of cricket. They’re part of the reason cricket’s video game forms can never be as satisfying.
The principle that the umpire’s decision is final must be maintained. We teach children not to challenge an umpire’s decision, and then let them see luminaries of the game making a strange T symbol to do just that.
Beyond these principles, reviews take the drama out of the game. They temper unrestrained outbursts of joy by making everyone wait for a review which may or may not happen. Think back to the Channel Nine commentary Peter Siddle’s hat-trick last year.
As Mark Taylor bellowed, ‘It’s out! Peter Siddle’s got a hat-trick!’, Mark Nicholas interrupted with ‘not yet he hasn’t’, and the decision was reviewed before Siddle could celebrate again.
Nicholas may not have realised it at the time in his totally correct commentary, but he was giving voice to the DRS’s ability to stifle moments of great drama with pedantry.
Edgbaston in 2005 would have been such a moment. That was a game decided by an incorrect decision, as Michael Kasprowicz’s hand was not holding the bat when struck by Andrew Flintoff’s short ball.
Yet it is remembered as one of the greatest Test matches ever played. It is not remembered for a technically incorrect umpiring decision which robbed Australia of victory.
Instead it is fondly looked upon by fans who recognise England’s delirious celebration, the realisation that this Ashes series would be a true challenge, and Australia’s pluck in coming so close.
Perhaps more than all of this we remember Andrew Flintoff’s sporting gesture of consoling Brett Lee before joining the delirium, an image which is seen as representing everything cricket is supposed to be.
The decision review system is not about the players or the umpires or the fans. It is about administrators trying to adjust figures. It is about imposing perfectionism and predictability upon a sport which is loved for its lack of both.
These four Test matches will be splendid contests. Australia’s fresh bowlers and aging batsmen will be tested by an Indian team loaded with greatness.
I am grateful that this series will be played as cricket has always been, in the interests of the people who truly own the game rather than those who control it.
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