Let the game be quirky, not the umpiring

Martin Williamson says in his post that he likes cricket to be "quirky, annoying and enthralling". Well, so do I. But I like the quirkiness and the unpredictability to come from the players, and not from the umpire.

Do you turn on the television to watch Sachin Tendulkar and Glenn McGrath strut their talents, or to see Steve Bucknor muff up yet another decision that you can talk about at the pub in the evening? Let me put it plainly: Bucknor exists not for our entertainment, but to make sure that he does justice to the efforts of Tendulkar and McGrath, and all the other players out there. Any tools that can help him do this well are welcome.

And Hawk-Eye is a rocking tool for this purpose. Martin refers to the "fair share of glitches" that Hawk-Eye has, and for both my edification and the readers' enlightenment, I request him to point out some of them. The only areas of doubt, which occur if the ball pitches too close to the bat, can be built into the system with the benefit going to the batsmen. But perhaps I am ignorant, and will be grateful if I am educated. If there are technological flaws in Hawk-Eye that go against my claim that it can give a better decision than the umpire in every instance of an lbw decision, I shall give up my claims for it.

An appeal to authority, and that too anonymous ones, is hardly an effective argument.

Everyone for the use of technology in this debate is also against the use of using TV replays for lbw decisions, as I'd stated in an earlier post. Martin, thus, constructs a straw man when he begins a sentence saying "If Hawk-Eye, the snickometer and endless replays are allowed…" Technology in umpiring does not necessarily imply the use of replays.

Hawk-Eye, as I have stated before (point 4), does not require television replays, which are only an interface for the viewer. If Hawk-Eye is used, the umpire would have have a hand-held device with him that would instantly tell him if the ball pitched in line and whether it would have hit the stumps or not. Not only will Hawk-Eye give a better LBW decision than Steve Bucknor, every time, it will also give a quicker lbw decision than Steve Bucknor, every time. If you want to speed up the game and avoid unnecessary delays, it's the umpires you ought to worry about, and technology which you ought to embrace.

Martin also brings up the point of matches getting shorter if technology is used. Well, so far, the benefit of the doubt goes to the batsman, and technology will reduce the doubt. So will batsmen get out more often? Or will they eliminate all tactics that depend on taking advantage of that doubt, such as thrusting their pads out to spinners? I suspect many more batsmen will be forced to play with their bats more often, and bowlers, especially spinners, will get their due rewards more frequently. Is that a bad thing? As I'd asked here earlier (point 3), "Isn't optimal application of the laws of the game the ideal that we should strive for?"

Technology will help us get closer to that.