With cricket slowly gearing up for a restart after the Coronavirus-enforced shutdown for the past three months, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has recently released the post-COVID guidelines for the resumption of cricket in order to ensure the players and staff’s safety.
Apart from recommending the ban on the usage of saliva on the ball, the Anil Kumble-led ICC Cricket Committee has also suggested for local umpires and additional review to each team’s tally of DRS (Decision Review System) across the three formats of the game when the actions resume.
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While the ban on the saliva has triggered a lot of mixed emotions from the cricket pundits and players, but the safety of the players and others involved in the game is the necessity of this critical time to avoid the spread of the deadly COVID-19 on the field, the other recommendations have also raised questions.
Currently, each team is allowed two DRS per innings in Tests and one per innings in ODIs and T20Is, but they will have an extra review in each format in the post-COVID-19 scenario.
Well, the ICC Cricket Committee Kumble has on Tuesday (May 26) explained the reason behind additional DRS as well as the logic behind the suggestion to use of local umpires.
Indian spin great said the elite ICC umpires might not travel for overseas series due to the travel restrictions around the world in the wake of the pandemic, therefore, the committee came out with a suggestion to give preference to the local umpires when the game returns amid COVID-19 pandemic.
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He further said the local coaches don’t have adequate experience of umpiring at the International level, which can lead to errors during matches, and hence the ICC Cricket Committee recommended one more review to help the teams in the post-COVID-19 scenario.
Kumble said on Star Sports show Cricket Connected: “I think the need of the hour was to start cricket. We also felt that because of travel restrictions, there could be quarantine measures. You don’t have too many elite umpires in the panel. So, we felt that for cricket to kickstart, its best to use local umpires.”
He further went on to explain, “Most countries don’t have the experience, the local umpires don’t have the experience of a Test match or being part of a Test match. The reason that we started neutral umpiring 20 years ago was because there was a perception of bias.
The recommendation for an extra review for both teams is not to root that out, but we felt that there could be potential inexperience being in a Test match situation, which is why the advantage of the additional review would probably benefit both the teams.”
Kumble signed off by saying, “That’s one of the reasons why we recommended that we should give the additional review to both the teams in these scenarios.”
(With IANS Inputs)
