by Girish Menon
The DRS debate, definitely on the netosphere and to some extent on TV and print media, appears to be a conversation of the deaf. These warriors appear to have wrapped themselves in national colours with scorn and ridicule being the weapons used. Does this win over their opponents? I doubt it, because both groups are dominated by users of terms like 'Luddites' and '100 % foolproof' which instead of persuading the dissenter actually antagonises them. In this piece I will attempt to try to mediate this debate and attempt a possible solution to the imbroglio.
It is a principle of rhetoric that the side demanding a change from the status quo must provide the burden of proof. To that extent I will agree that the pro DRS lobby have already proven that DRS does reduce the number of umpiring errors in a cricket match. I'm sure that BCCI will admit this point. However the ICC's claim that DRS improves decisions by 93 % is in the realm of statistics and it is possible to find methodological grey areas that will challenge this number. So for purposes of this argument I'm willing to discount ICC's claim and willing to start on the premise that DRS does reduce errors by at least 70 %. The debate should actually be more concerned with the next question i.e. 'at what price does one obtain this 70% increase in decision accuracy and is it worthwhile?' This question is ignored by net warriors and media pundits alike and I wonder why?
Before I proceed further I wish to remind readers of the MMR scare scandal, not many years ago, that prompted a mass scare in the UK about a triple jab vaccine and its links with autism. Some may recall Andrew Wakefield, an expert, on TV exhorting viewers to avoid the vaccine. The saga ended with Wakefield being discredited and found to have multiple undeclared conflicts of interest in propagating the scare.
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To avoid a similar hijacking of the DRS debate I suggest that all protagonists declare their interests in the matter. I for one have no truck with any cricketing body or media organisation or a technology provider or a provider of a competing technology. Also, I'd like a reduction in umpiring errors at a price that will sustain and grow cricket all over the world.
Similarly it is incumbent on the likes of Michael Vaughan to declare their links with the purveyors of such technologies so that the cricket loving public know that their views are without any profit or personal motive.
While the reliability and validity of DRS technologies has been well debated, the monopoly profits that derive to these suppliers has been largely ignored. I suspect this is the real issue where the BCCI is at loggerheads with the others. As an outsider, I think national cricket boards have their own technology suppliers which they wish to back. They may even have an investment in them which may expose their reluctance to adopt alternative and cheaper solutions to a problem. Jagmohan Dalmiya's argument against the esoteric Duckworth-Lewis method is a case in point.
It is a truism that in the market for technologies, unfortunately, the best technology does not always win. Economics students will be aware that Dvorak keyboards have never made much headway against their QWERTY rivals and Betamax became a cropper to VHS. So just like the well ensconced Duckworth Lewis method, Hot Spot and Hawk Eye hope to become monopoly providers of technology services to the ICC. This will enable them protection from cheaper alternative service providers and will guarantee their promoters life long rents.
There is another dimension to this issue viz. 'Cost'. In 1976 the FIH (International Federation for Hockey) replaced natural turf with astroturf to improve the game. Today, while the game looks good on TV and is fast etc it provides no competition to cricket in countries playing both sports. One possible cause is the decline of the sport in India and Pakistan, the two nations who did not have the financial resources to create adequate 'astroturf based' infrastructure among the lovers of the sport. Along similar lines, the prohibitively expensive DRS technology may bankrupt the smaller cricket boards of the world. I'm sure no warrior on either side of this debate wants a reduction in the numerical diversity of cricket lovers.
I suppose as a way out of this imbroglio would be for the ICC to take ownership of the current technologies and make the technology 'open source'. Allow competitive bidding for DRS services instead of paying monopoly rents to the patent owning suppliers. I'm sure this will reduce the costs for DRS and even the BCCI will be keen to support such a venture.