ICC’s pursuit of tracking certainty could persuade India to accept DRS

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2014/dec/23/india-drs-icc-mike-selvey

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Ever since the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was founded in 1861 it has been in the vanguard of scientific and engineering research. Currently it is judged to be the premier university in the world, ahead of both Cambridge and Imperial College, London which hold joint second place. So, given its reputation in the field of guidance system technology, it might be said that this is the go-to institution when there is a need for independent assessment of such things. And that is just where the International Cricket Council, and the Sony Corporation, which is responsible for Hawk-Eye, the tracking used in the umpires’ Decision Review System, have gone in their efforts to persuade the Board of Control for Cricket in India, and more specifically the extraordinarily powerful voices of MS Dhoni and Sachin Tendulkar, that DRS works and is a benefit to the game.

I have written here before about the technology itself and how I have been shown empirical data aligned with visual evidence to show that the Hawk-Eye system is actually remarkably good now – 10 times more so than when it was first trialled in 2008 and demonstrably accurate to within a single millimetre over a distance of seven metres, the general distance travelled by a ball between pitching and reaching the stumps.

The quibble I have had with it has centred not on the efficacy of the equipment but the parameters set for its use by the ICC, specifically the “umpire’s call” element, which I believe is too wide for consistent reliable decisions and is designed to protect the umpire’s integrity rather than get the decision correct. And thus the perceived inaccuracy of Hawk-Eye itself becomes misinterpreted.

Curiously I was sent a link to footage of the decision, a total anomaly, during a recent Test match between Pakistan and New Zealand in which the Pakistan left-handed batsman Shan Masood was given out lbw to the left-arm pace bowler Trent Boult and decided to review it. To general amazement the tracking predicted that the delivery, which was yorker length and clipped the batsman’s left (back) heel as he tried to leg-glance, would break sharply from leg to off on pitching and would hit middle stump. So the decision stayed. The chances are that the ball, which was shaping into the batsman, reverse-swinging, would have clipped leg stump and the decision would have stayed on the “umpire’s call” premise. Clearly, though, it was a nonsense and I got in touch with those I know at Hawk-Eye, who admitted the error but stressed it was not a straightforward issue and came down to an operator error. They would, they said, explain it to me in person, which has not yet been possible, and the story has since been well publicised. But suffice to say that the error was not in the equipment but in its application.

This, though, will have been grist to the Indian mill which has consistently insisted that for them to accept it, it must be 100%, as if this is something achievable. Thus we have had an Indian stand-off, frustratingly so when the rest of the cricket world accepts its use as beneficial rather than an encumbrance and regards India’s intransigence, even when taking the predictive element out of the equation, as throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

So, despite the ever-improving nature of the equipment, India remains steadfast on its use. It cannot be used unilaterally in a series (now that would be interesting) and, it is reckoned, it has now cost India considerably in the current series in Australia. In the first Test in Adelaide Shikhar Dhawan, Ajinkya Rahane and Wriddhiman Saha all fell to disputed catches, decisions that could have been rectified by replay alone; similarly at The Gabba, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ravichandran Ashwin got apparently bad calls that slow motion would again have corrected, none of this even resorting to predictive tracking.

But now a softening in the Indian attitude is detectable. It is not a mistrust of the equipment at all, it appears, but instead of the “umpire’s call” parameters. “We feel,” Dhoni said after the second Test, “that there are a lot of 50-50 calls not going in our favour. We are at the receiving end more often than not and, even when DRS is around, those decisions won’t go in our favour.”

If there is a hint of paranoia about this, a sort of persecution complex, then he goes on: “What is important is to use DRS to give the right decision irrespective of whether or not the umpire has given it out. If the ball is shown to be hitting the stumps it is out; if less than half the ball is hitting the stumps it is still out.”

Here I sympathise and offer only the caveat that, if all decisions are referred, then first there would be no need for on-field umpires beyond an ability to carry hats and make a box sign in the air; and secondly that third umpires would require absolute specialist training, which they are getting. All of this is being considered by the ICC’s DRS sub-committee, chaired by the former India captain Anil Kumble, who was in charge of the team when it was first trialled, against Sri Lanka, and a considerable voice when it comes to this subject.

It is he who is charged now with persuading his esteemed compatriots of the benefits of the system; of persuading the ICC that its current parameters are causing as much confusion and dissent as when it is not in use; and of proving once and for all the efficiency of the technology. The last part will be down to MIT, the remainder to Kumble. My predictive element suggests that, with some compromise, India will come on board.