The referral system

I think the referral system will be scrapped soon.

India wont sign up on it, and the ICC don't seem to have the power to force India to get on board. Sooner or later the ICC will have to go with what India do.

Also, we've seen that the technology is unreliable, and can't always be trusted to make the right decision.

It's got six months left, max.

I'll write what I put in the other thread....

I think it's been pretty successful. It's there to get rid of howlers which it does very well. Hotspot needs sorting or alternatively snicko needs to be more efficient, I know hawkeye gets a bit of stick but in this series alone there have been enough howlers that have been reversed so as to make the system worthwhile.

Banindia then I guess (after this test match which I'm enjoying ).

I agree. Banindia.

If we're all on a repost fest:

Zat wrote:

Dello wrote:

Henry wrote:Why is snicko not allowed to be used? And why does it seem to take the TV station so long to bring the outcome of snicko onto our screens?

Because they have to match up the frames to the soundwaves which just isn't instantaneous. Also there's wiggle room for dishonesty in lining up the visuals and sounds to give a misleading result - unlikely, you'd think, but it only takes one team to sniff a conspiracy from the host broadcaster and it'll be a sh!t-storm quicker than you can say planes fuelled and ready to go.

Would only take a few seconds - literally - to dodgy up the audio so as the 'snick' matched the vision of an apparent edge.

But hotspot takes it up the arse.

Aye, "hotspot" is utter rubbish, and should be consigned to history. Or a Christmas toy.

If snicko is sooooo controversial, surely you could have some sort of adjudicator present (like the video ump). That would be unlikely to drag things out - just put paid to any broadcaster's temptation to ginger things up.

It does seem to take longer than it should to produce a result, and surely it's technologically possible to get immediately matched audio-video footage? Been done with camcorders etc for decades. You only need to ramp up the volume control.

As far as the caught behind scenario goes, why not just say that a batsman has to either walk or refer the decision immediately, or at least within about 3 seconds of been given out; plenty long enough for even the most Hicklike meathead to remember whether he hit the thing.

Agree with that. One referral per innings, and it must be instant.

I must be the only one who likes it... you get to see captains & wicketkeepers look complete mugs about when to refer.

Or maybe I watch England 'use' it too much

Don't get me wrong; I love the referral system! Much less dodgy gamesmanship than before. It shows up bad umpires too. Or rather it means that when an umpire makes a mistake (which is a human thing to do after all) he can no longer just claim everyone else is wrong and refuse to even watch the replay later (as does Bowden according to Boycs). My only gripe is that it doesn't use ALL the info (eg including initial player reaction and snicko) to make decisions.

I even quite like the whole "GONE!!!!! HE'S OUT!!!!!!!..........er...actually he might not be" scenarios which make commentators look a bit chumpish too.

It's better than not having it, going back to the Sepp Blatter world of one pair of eyes expected to match up against numerous camera angles and studio gadgets. If India don't want it, let them go off on their own and see if they can find someone to play against.

The only problem being that every country's board actually WANTS to play India because of the financial rewards it provides.

Why don't India want it BTW?

ever hopeful wrote:Why don't India want it BTW?

They were retards when they used it IIRC.

And the official reason?

It needs fine tuning for things like the Bell fiasco but it is obviously a good addition to the game.

JGK wrote:It needs fine tuning for things like the Bell fiasco but it is obviously a good addition to the game.

Yeah. I'm slightly conflicted. The technology, which is imperfect, is rather out-ranking the on-field umpires (also imperfect) which seems a cockeyed way of going about things.

I also don't like how there are no stone-dead LBWs anymore. I think the Aussies have challenged pretty much every LBW decision made against them in this series. Some rightly, some wrongly. Some a decent use of the technology due to a big inside edge, some a bit of a pisstake. I don't know, it just doesn't feel like cricket to totally take the LBW away from the on-field umpire and only accept the word of a computer programme.

On the flipside, I caught a T20 between NZ and Pakistan the other day that featured some rotten decisions and my instant reaction was "that'll be overturned" but of course they had no DRS and the game suddenly felt naked without it.

I guess it's here to say, but there's a lot of room for improvement - in the technology, the implementation and the way the players use/abuse it.

Yeah, agree with what a lot of people say. It has helped even out a lot of injustices. Hot spot is usually pretty good too.

But Hot Spot has conspicuously failed on four or five occasions in this series.

No, can't remember them offhand. But Bell and Clarke were two of them.

PeterCS wrote:But Hot Spot has conspicuously failed on four or five occasions in this series.

No, can't remember them offhand. But Bell and Clarke were two of them.

Pete, you are looking at it the wrong way round.

So is Hotspot apparently.

I agree with the opinion that there should only be one referral per team. It seems that it's being used more for hoping that for a not out, timewasting or gamesmanship rather than correcting howlers which it was introduced for. But i'm not sure how teams can be made to use it only for bad decisions.

From a personal point of view, even though it doesn't take a long time to get the decision, i still find it annoyingly long and anti-climatic (like waiting to see if Siddle had a hat-trick).

Having been watching the series in South Africa, i can't say i've missed the UDRS at all although that's mainly to do with the quality of umpiring. It's been nice to see the players just getting on with it after a decision they don't agree with.

PeterCS wrote:So is Hotspot apparently.

Pete, the game is better for every howler that the technology eliminates.

It shouldn't be sh!t canned because it failed to detect something you believe happened.

Henry Nolonga wrote:Having been watching the series in South Africa, i can't say i've missed the UDRS at all although that's mainly to do with the quality of umpiring..

What????

Didn't you see all the fark ups in the 2nd test.

taipan wrote:

Henry Nolonga wrote:Having been watching the series in South Africa, i can't say i've missed the UDRS at all although that's mainly to do with the quality of umpiring..

What????

Didn't you see all the fark ups in the 2nd test.

Unfortunately i wasn't able to see much of the 2nd test. I only really know about the Harby LBW decision (or was that this test? In which case, there have been more bad decisions than i remember so my original point is void!) being a really bad one. Which other ones were there?

DeVillers, long way forward, going over the top by at least 6 inches.

Boucher, hit outside the libe by a ball miising the stumps.

Both LBW

I saw the Boucher decision and while it was wrong i wouldn't call it a complete howler where it was obvious to everyone. Agreed about the deVilliers one though. In the third test though there have been some great decisions under pressure however.