You only live twice?

The much-debated Umpire Decision Review System will be implemented at the 2011 Cricket World Cup and our expert is firmly convinced that the sport absolutely needs it.

The name ‘UDRS’ is clumsy, and the UDRS implementation has been just as clumsy.

UDRS is short for ‘Umpire Decision Review System’. This system allows the batting and fielding side the opportunity to challenge the decision of the on-field umpire. But there is a proviso: you cannot challenge after two failures!

Why two? What is so sacred about two? The argument for limiting the failed challenges to two is that every decision would otherwise be challenged, and this would unnecessarily delay the game. It is also intended to appease on-field umpires who might ask: “what the hell am I doing out in the middle?”

Restricting referrals to two is actually making things worse. For example, one of the two Indian referrals would perforce be reserved for Virender Sehwag if he is playing; and the second might be held back for Sachin Tendulkar. This is ridiculous. We have also seen situations where a blatant umpiring error could not be contested because both the referrals had been used up. Indeed, we also know of instances where a batsman has abused a referral: he knows that there is a faint nick, but he also knows that technology is unlikely to spot it! So instead of walking, he asks for a review.

Today’s avatar of the UDRS is essentially a compromise. We want to use technology, such as Hawkeye, Hot Spot, Snickometer and Super Slo-Mo, but we don’t want to offend the umpires. This can’t go on. We have to quickly choose one of the ‘umpires only’ or ‘technology only’ options.
 
The latter is much more likely because cricket is, what mathematicians would call, a ‘discrete’ game: the game moves forward step by step, or ball by ball. Tennis is discrete too, as indeed is American football. Football, on the other hand, is ‘continuous’.

If we reflect for a moment, we will realize that technology is easier to implement in discrete games than in continuous ones. The next ball in cricket can be delayed to confirm an lbw decision, but a football game cannot be halted to verify if a player was really offside or not!

That’s why the future is much more likely to be ‘full-blown’ UDRS. In this set-up, the best umpires are not in the playing field … they are seated next to technology-based outputs. Every appeal will be reviewed; every decision will be technology-driven. The umpires in the middle will essentially be lackeys: they will call ‘play’, count the six balls that make up the over, ensure good on-field behaviour, signals boundaries or dismissals (after hearing from the chief umpire indoors), peer at light meters, hold the bowler’s cap and, if they feel like Billy Bowden, do a little jig to amuse the crowds. But they would still be required to call no balls (because that’s a real time decision).

The ICC tells us that the best umpires get 93% of their decisions right, while UDRS-assisted decisions are 97% right. These statistics try to impress, but ignore that one of the 7% wrong decisions could completely change the course of the match. A better way to estimate performance is to ask how little did the umpire’s performance affect the eventual result of the match … and it is here that UDRS will perform much more impressively.

The trouble with ICC is that it is fearful of technology. A decade and more ago, ICC asked Duckworth-Lewis (D/L) to come up with rain rules that could be computed on the back of an envelope, because they feared that a ground in some corner of Bulawayo might not have access to a computer. This meant poorer targets not because the D/L model was deficient but because ICC’s mindset was flawed. Today, ICC has similar fears about UDRS technology and its costs. But they will eventually discover that full-blown UDRS is indeed the way to go.