BCCI finally accepted DRS during England’s tour of India in 2016.
India’s Parliament Lok Sabha member Shashi Tharoor is a big cricket fan and even the politician has hailed the game of cricket as his favorite sport on many instances.
Mr. Tharoor, who has often called himself a ‘cricket tragic’, has now revealed that he is “a huge fan of the Decision Review System (DRS), calling it one of cricket’s best innovations.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP also revealed that he was “extremely upset” with Indian batting legend Sachin Tendulkar and former captain MS Dhoni for not embracing the amazing technology in the early years of DRS’s inception.
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Notably, India was the first team to use the DRS, a technology-based system to assist the match officials with their decision-making, back in 2008 during a Test series in Sri Lanka, but then-captain Dhoni opposed to the idea since they felt it wasn’t foolproof and contained flaws.
However, the technology was officially launched by the International Cricket Council (ICC) during the first Test between New Zealand and Pakistan on 24 November 2009 in Dunedin.
Tharoor told SportsKeeda in an interview: “I’m a huge fan of technology. I’ve been an advocate of DRS from the start, and I was extremely upset with Dhoni and Tendulkar for refusing it. I watch cricket and every time I’ve found that we were hard done by umpiring decisions. I never understood why we were so allergic to DRS. DRS is such a major innovation.”
He signed off, “I never want to see international cricket without DRS ever again. It is so indispensable and eliminates so many bad decisions, and it creates an additional form of excitement for the viewer. It adds an extra element of tension to the plot and it is a very welcome addition as far as I’m concerned.”