Definitive guide to DRS alternatives

You missed the one, true, perfect solution that like it or not, will eventually make its way into cricket sometime in the next 100 years. If the ICC stopped beating around the bush, they'd realise that companies have the technology right now to completely automate the technology to provide the umpire its opinion in realtime. It could be an earpice, hell you could even make it a mobile phone app! If you notice for LBW, all of it is automated anyway. Pitched in line, Hawkeye prediction etc, all makes the decision right away anyways. Computers can make a better, fairer, consistent decision based on what it detects on hotspot and snicko. You could even have a cheap stump microphone and a wireless transmitter to a mobile phone app via Bluetooth for club cricket as well! The only weakness would be judging fair catches, but those will be referred regardless, but the umpire having the opinion before he even makes the decision gives him even more authority so no-one will question him.

I don't think the system as it stands currently should be tweaked too much other than: a) If a batsman is given out LBW and wants to review, instead of asking for the review by way of the current T Symbol, they must tell the umpire "I'm going for the Shane Watson" b) Andre Nel - perhaps even Dale Steyn - should have a Hot Spot camera permanently focused on him. c) The ground announcer should inform those in attendance that a review has been requested, but in that wrestling/boxing announcer voice - Lets get ready to revieeeeeeeeeeeeeeew.

If you have hardcoded rules for DRS where every decision is either OUT or NOT OUT depending on how much of the ball is hitting the stump, or any other guidelines that are entirely independent of whatever decision the on-field umpire made - well the logical outcome of such a line of argument is that you don't have umpires judging lbw's at all, and every lbw shout is referred to the DRS. I think perhaps that may be the eventual destination of the DRS, I guess it depends on how much the balance between the flow of the game and the quest for technical perfection skews. I must confess, I don't agree with this quest for perfection with regards the ball tracking for LBW decisions - the system itself is predicating an entirely hypothetical occurence, based on what a cricket ball may have done had it not struck the batsman's pad, and as we have seen, the technology is not always foolproof. I don't agree that no matter what decision they make it is correct - if the ball is judged to be missing, or indeed hitting the stumps and the umpire has judged otherwise, it will be overturned. But as it stands the system is prepared to back the judgment of the umpires unless an obvious mistake has been made - I think that strikes the right balance. I've not seen bias from umpires at the international level where DRS is used, and umpires who make bad decisions repeatedly will be dropped, as we have seen - guys like Asoka Da Silva made a swift exit based on their dismal DRS statistics.

The biggest problem I have with the DRS system is simply that the umpire is making a decision on LBW's where no matter what decision they make it is correct so therefore it is still open to deliberate bias towards one team. For example if team A bowls all day on day one and has 5 lbw appeals turned down which apon replay show it to be 5 "umpires call" decisions but on day 2 when that team is batting and the bowling team has 5 lbw appeals given out and again the replays show "umpires call" then one team has certainly benefited at the expense of the other and of course this opens up calls of deliberate bias. The DRS system needs to have an out or not out defined for lbw's. I have heard it said that DRS gets 96% of decisions correct ( I think ) yet 90% of those decisions would still be assessed as correct if the umpire gave the exact opposite decision. Just not satisfactory.

First rule of DRS should be... never ever challenge an LBW decision ,which ever way the umpire has gone.

I’ve given club umpiring away, and have been umpiring for a franchise based social cricket competition called Last Man Stands for the last year or so, off and on. It’s been great fun. The best part is that you’re at the same venue each week, and there’s usually a pool of about 8 teams playing at each venue each day for a total of 4 games. Round robin style competition. This really helps with establishing a rapport with players, and if you’re good at your job you get recognised for your consistency, and players cut you a lot of slack and are prepared to overlook that 50/50 call that went against them for example. I also do the scoring so I’ve actually got something to do to keep me going, the day flies by. I don’t know how anyone puts up with umpiring club cricket these days. I had no problems with officiating at that level, got good report cards so to speak, and was encouraged to persist – but the sheer amount of bell ends and frustrated potential test hopefuls just killed it for me, I umpire for the mental challenge and the enjoyment of the game, and I can assure you there was no enjoyment derived from having to justify decisions to 11 armchair umpires on a regular basis.

Park umpiring is hilarious. Sometimes my colleagues are less than helpful. We have one bloke, who is otherwise loveable, who refuses to umpire because he says he's not confident enough. However, when he bats he questions the hapless fool who volunteered to umpire about all sorts of obscure rules and frequently starts a barney! He also goes on the offensive when he is bowling and pesters the opposition umpires to pieces.

Nope. Sorry AJM, there is no going back now. You can at least look forward to highlights of 80s classics during rain breaks in the cricket if you want to relive the good ole' days.

Noooo. The 'half a ball hitting' criticism that comes up could be the most frustrating part of the DRS discussion. It's simply an admission that the DRS may only be 99% accurate, and where it's touch and go, just leave it to the umpires. So if an umpire says not out but the DRS suggests only the slightest milimetre of the ball would have hit the stumps, it's fair enough that the batsman gets the benefit of the doubt in that case. Likewise, if an umpire says out and the DRS says the ball may have just grazed the stumps, again, best to stick with the umpire, the same as if the DRS wasn't there in the first place. For some reason that drives Geoff Lawson and the like bonkers though - even though overall I think the DRS has led to more LBWs being given, because "he took a big step forward" is no longer a valid reason to give a batsman not out. The idea that technology shouldn't be used at all if it isn't 100% accurate makes no sense.

The ball-tracking technology takes 30 seconds or something to start working after a delivery, which is why they leave it til last. You'll notice sometimes the ump will do the other stuff, then say "give me the ball tracker when it's ready". Obviously it's the key part of the whole thing for LBs but at the moment it takes a little while. When that's upgraded I imagine the umps will use it straight away.

If you really want to stop teams using their reviews to try and game the system, restrict teams to one review. For the entire innings. Would immediately put an end to anyone trying speculative reviews. Would ensure that they’d only use the review for decisions that are clear cut mistakes. Ultimately whenever you have a game where one of the modes of dismissal is based on what a ball might have done, rather than what it actually did, you are always going to have conjecture about the outcome.

The flip side to this is that umpires are now no longer inclined to rule out LBW shouts just because the batsman has advanced down the wicket. A bowler like Graeme Swann would have been nowhere near as effective prior to the advent of DRS and how it has changed the way umpires assess LBW decisions.

I agree. I don't have a lot of issues with it either. I think technology has probably helped improve consistency in umpiring of LBW's because they can review decisions made and see where balls a coming from and going to and hitting the pads and what the prediction of the path of the ball is and they can see how often the ball might be sliding down leg or not, or might be going over the top or hitting the bails. I reckon that in the years before all this technology there were a lot of LBW's given out that were going well over the stumps, but in the ball tracking era we can see this and umpires can then adjust their decisions based on what the technology is showing them.

I agree. I think they've laid out this sequential method of doing it to try and build drama for the TV audiences, but I think they need to change it, because I think most people are over the drama of DRS and are now more annoyed at how long it can take than anything. So it would be better for the viewers to just get it done with quicker and get back on with the game. But I do agree that despite it actually being bad for the viewing public, that I believe the way they do it was largely done with that in mind. But now they need to admit that they got it wrong, and just go for a method that gets a quicker result rather than dragging it out for drama.

This was umpiring in park cricket matches where we don't have proper umpires. There are some people who go out there and simply never give LBW's. I've always said that I'd want to apply the exact same benefit of the doubt criteria as if I was a neutral umpire, so if my teammates don't like that then I'm happy for someone else to umpire. I had turned down an LBW appeal earlier because it wasn't out, and I wonder if they just assumed that me giving that out was because I was just one of these people who never gives LBW's and therefore didn't bother appealing. But I was literally standing there ready to put my finger up if someone appealed because I thought it was dead plumb, but nobody appealed! I one was umpiring and gave my captain out LBW to be the third wicket of a hatrick. There weren't any issues with him over that considering it was about as plumb LBW as you could get and he knew it! Still, it wasn't fun having to do that!

I wasn't saying that umpires never get it wrong against the fielding side, just that the "howler" call doesn't work as well for that side. Where a batsman can know for certain he has or hasn't hit the ball (there are times they get get wrong having hit the ground simultaneously or the like) and therefore can know the umpire has got it wrong, because they are in a much better position to know, the fielding side rarely are. You get the odd time when a fieldsman is in a position to see something clearly that the umpire missed. Maybe slip fieldsman to a spinner, might be in a great spot, closer than the umpire and able to pick up a fine edge the umpire missed. But more often than not the fieldsmen aren't in a better position than the umpire, and we know that fieldsmen are often convinced something is out when it's not. So while you could tell your batsmen not to refer unless you know for certain it's a bad decision (like you got bat on it and were given out LBW) but you can't say the same thing to the fielding side. They aren't generally in a position to have better information than the umpire, so it's always going to be a subjective call rather than truly calling the umpire out for a howler.

re: the point about why ball-tracking is done last. It's precisely because of the computer generated graphics and the multiple green traffic lights that it goes last. It's for the audience and I would bet it's been dictated that way for suspense and climax. The crowd, both live and on TV, get to watch the boxes light up with anticipation which maxes when the third box goes green.

I quite like the DRS as it is - if players use them up 'strategically' then get done by a bad call then tough luck, it is a game. Mostly I think they underscore how often the umpire is right but it's also had a couple of other unappreciated benefits. - Consistency of LBW calls. In pre-DRS days there were some umpires, on some days, who wouldn't give an LBW decision to their own mother if the batsman was playing french cricket. There were others who were a bit free and easy on occasion. Even at the highest level, LBW decisions were inconsistent across umpires. I think this has changed significantly with the spectre of referrals hanging over their heads. - Excessive appealing. It's never going to go away completely but teams don't go up as hard or as often for nonsense appeals anymore and don't remonstrate as much afterwards when they are turned down. They have their choice to refer it, and they know they're going to look like pork chops if they carry on too much and then choose not to refer. If they make a nonsense review, they also understand they are now more reliant on the umpire whose time they just wasted (since they used up a review).

One thing with Umpires call is that I think at the moment too large an area is Umpires Call. It's centre of the ball with the centre of the stump. That means that a ball that's fully collecting the leg or off stump, where the ball-tracking even shows part of the ball on the inside of the stump, is still going as umpires call. Surely centre of the ball, edge of the stump, or edge of the ball, centre of the stump, should be the point. That's the point at which you are hitting half a stump. At the moment you are hitting flush on the stump and going with umpires call. I'm happy to not give teams back reviews for umpires call. They know what umpires call is, and know that if the umpire gives you out LBW and you review that it has to be completely missing, any tiny flick of the stumps will give you out, and the fielding side know that with the current umpires call rules, they actually have a pretty small target as you basically need 3/4 of the ball hitting the stumps. So if they review something that's a close call, they run the risk of losing that review. If you don't lose it for Umpires call, then I suspect we will see a lot more reviewing happening. On that point, as previously mentioned, I don't see why the umpire has to completely exhaust checking for inside edges before going to ball-tracking. Ball tracking is the part that's automatic and quick. Surely that can be done first, and only if it's going to be out by that do you bother checking for the edge. They can even put it up split screen on the TV, so you can see ball tracking do that while the umpire checks for the no-ball and edge simultaneously.

Ha - I've had that last one Chris when I was a junior - plumb inswinging full ball smacks the pads and I aborted an appeal on the "ahhh" because no-one else went up. The umpire waited until the end of the over and then explained to me I should have asked the question.