Dubai: The International Cricket Council has revealed that every effort is being made to ensure the Decision Review System (DRS) is as accurate as possible.
Though it did not have an answer as to why India is not willing to use DRS, ICC chief executive Dave Richardson explained the situation.
“It is probably a question you need to ask them [India] as to why they cannot be convinced as yet. The reasons they have given us are difficult to overcome because they go to the old philosophy of the game as well as technical reason of various equipment,” he said.
“As a principle, they do not like the idea of the players initiating the review system. They say that umpires are in charge of that and don’t talk to us about asking our captain to request the review. In their eyes that is challenging the authority of the umpire.
“The ICC is a members’ organisation and we can’t dictate to any particular member what to do because it is all done by committees voting for various regulations that come into place. So our tactic will be to make DRS as good as it possibly can be and then I think hopefully, down the line, people will consider it is a system that can be used.
“Who knows, maybe in five to ten years the technology will have developed to such an extent that we can leave it to the umpires to initiate the review process.”
When former Australia batsman Dean Jones asked about the accuracy of DRS with regard to leg before decisions, Richardson recalled an incident when, in 1994, Jones was given out leg before when he was 12 feet down the pitch.
“The way the regulations are adapted for DRS, it minimises those freak decisions,” he said.
ICC general manager Geoff Allardice added: “They [players] have had some reservations about the performance of DRS at the moment. So our focus is to get it operating efficiently.
“Sri Lanka want to use it at home and Bangladesh also want it. Players from most countries preferred to have DRS in matches they are playing than not have it. So at this stage we are in the process of getting people involved.”
