Referal System for Players : A groundbreaking move

In a groundbreaking move, players will have the power to question an umpire’s decision — with official sanction — when India travel to Sri Lanka for their three-Test series in late July.

Cricket boards of the two countries have agreed to try out the referral system, in which a batsman in the middle, or the fielding captain, has  the right to ask the standing umpires to confer with the television umpire if he feels a wrong decision has been made.

3 referals per innings would be allowed to start with. Upon referal, the third umpire and also the onfield umpire would be free to use all the available technology to asses the decision. In my opinion this is a very good move given the recent umpiring controversies. This will keep the umpires on their toes and would give a good and free environment for the players. If you think about some of the attrocious decisions handed out during the India's recent series to Australia and think about such a system in place, who knows what the final results of the series would have been?

However cricket purists have always been against the excessive use of technology. A few of the reasons they would always cite are listed below:

1. Too much of technology would make the game very mechanical and would make cricket devoid of the un-intentional human errors which make cricket a game of glorious uncertainties.
2. With three such appeals entertained every innings, this will slow down the pace of the game. With so many runs being scored these days and hence over rate already going down, this will further slow down the over rates.
3. The suit of technology involved in cricket is not standardized till date. This might result in different judgements for the same situation based on what kind of tools are in use for that particular game.

Above three points do make sense, but its high time that we use them for what they can offer and raise the standard of the game even further rather than thinking about what they can not. In any case, technology can always be improved over the time. No use of living in the stone age.