Former England captain Michael Vaughan has suggested a radical idea to lessen the mistakes by DRS operators by asking the ICC to put cameras on Decision Review System (DRS) operators for ‘transparency’.
This comes after the Joe Root dismissal in the England second innings of the recent Ranchi Test. Root was dismissed by R Ashwin via LBW decision. The ball-tracking system of the DRS indicated that more than half of the ball was outside the line when it was pitched and the ball was going to hit the leg stump.
Root left the crease without any complaints but later seemed to re-check the dismissal in the England dressing room.
Former England captain Michael Vaughan has offered a simple fix and argued that there is growing distrust amongst the fans about the credibility of DRS and the ICC could bring trust back by putting a camera and a microphone in the DRS room, where the calls are being made.
“I’m not saying anyone is cheating. I’m trying to answer when a decision is made and we all disagree with it. If the person on Hawk-Eye is filmed it puts the noise to bed. Umpire’s call, personally I think we should just get rid of it. If it’s hitting the stumps, it’s hitting the stumps, then it’s a level playing field. I can understand supporters on both sides being frustrated with the decisions that have been made. It doesn’t look like Hawk-Eye is having a great series,” Vaughan was quoted as saying on the Test match Special Podcast.
“The most important operators of decisions now are in the trucks. We need to have a camera in the truck to give an understanding of how it all comes to that decision. All I want is full transparency. If it takes the International Cricket Council employing someone to put in the trucks for integrity, they have to do that as well.
For the game in general, for people watching, we need to see who is operating, because the person operating the technology is more important than the umpires,” he added.
Former England bowler Steven Finn though came out in support of umpire’s decision.
“From the naked eye, when you’re watching the delivery, you think that pitched outside leg and all your cricketing intuition sort of kicks in, and it’s like it can’t have pitched in line with the stumps and ended up where it did. There’s no umpires call on where the ball pitches so when the projection comes through and the DRS has pulled its numbers into his computer on the initial contact with the pitch, there’s no contention about where that has pitched as a result of the technology.
Where that ball pitches, according to the technology that is meant to be very accurate, they’re saying that what it looks like is 51 percent of that ball is pitching within the outside line of the stump and therefore it’s out,” he said in TNT sports.
