Cricket can only use technology if it is willing to accept that there are occasions when it will not work. There's no point in expecting it to be perfect
Posted by Andy Bull Tuesday 8 December 2009 13.05 GMT guardian.co.uk
Mark Benson, left, with Steve Bucknor Photograph: Rob Griffith/AP
The Turk could play a good game of chess, but he was erratic. On his day, and he had plenty of them because his career lasted 84 years, he could beat anyone, and did. In 1783 he bettered Benjamin Franklin, and in 1809 he was too good for Napoleon Bonaparte, who he defeated in only 19 moves. Depending on which story you read, Boney was reputedly so irritated by the loss that he ordered a rematch, this time insisting that the Turk play blindfolded.
The Turk lost to the best players of his era though. Great crowds turned out to watch his defeats to André Philodor and Godfrey, Duc du Bouillon. The fans found the Turk's inconsistency surprising. He was, after all, a machine. An automaton. The world's first chess-playing robot, built 150 years before that word had even been coined. Or so it seemed.
History later confirmed what sceptics had suspected all along. Inside all the complex clockwork workings of the Turk was a man working a set of mechanical controls by candlelight. It was 1854, after the Turk was accidentally incinerated, that the owner admitted the secret to the public: the machine was only as good as the man operating it.
A mere 155 years later, and the ICC still hasn't twigged. Umpire Mark Benson dropped out of the second Test between Australia and West Indies because of his poor health and, if the word on the grapevine is true, will retire from Test umpiring later today. Even if Benson did not quit as a protest against the technology which had been used to overturn his decisions, a stressful day's umpiring surely did nothing to improve his health. As ICC general manager Dave Richardson told the BBC, about Benson's withdrawal "health is part of it, the pressure that umpires are under - with or without the review system - is also part of it."
Advocates of TV referrals believe that they will eliminate inconsistency in decision-making and cut out errors. That is true in the case of run-outs and stumpings, which, like old-fashioned telephones, present a straight choice between button A and button B. Out or not out with a thick white crease line to separate the two.
That still leaves eight other ways for a batsman to be dismissed, many of them much less clear cut. Tennis, the sport which has most successfully incorporated Hawk-Eye, uses it only to map where the ball has landed, and again relies on white lines to delineate right decision from wrong. Cricket is trying to use the same technology to make far more nuanced decisions, trying to find answers that depend on interpretation, anticipation and, when it comes to judging the ball's future flight, guess-work.
The machine cannot do that alone. As with the Turk, the TV referral system is only as good as the man operating it. Anyone who thinks it will reduce controversy rather than create it has likely never heard of Donut Theory, which predicates that the likelihood of a mistake increases each time an extra screen and an extra human are added to a system, because, invariably, someone somewhere will be eating a donut rather than concentrating on their job.
Asad Rauf, who overturned Benson's decision that Shivnarine Chanderpaul was not out caught behind, could not be accused of lacking diligence. If anything he seems to have thought too much and reversed the verdict even though the evidence available to him was inconclusive. Hot-spot did not detect a thing, yet Rauf, using judgement honed over a long career in the middle, felt that the appeal should be upheld anyway. He is not the first man to find that being a TV umpire is a confusing remit which can conflict with instincts. Daryl Harper struggled with the job in the West Indies v England series last year.
These may only be teething troubles. They could be fixed by following the example of rugby union, where the referee on the pitch will ask of his colleague in the TV booth either "Is that a try?" or "Is there any reason why I cannot award this try?". Such a blunt enquiry limits the scope for interpretation which, after all, is what the art of umpiring has always been about. But rugby has accepted that there will be many occasions when the TV umpire cannot give an answer.
There have been innumerable occasions when it has not been clear if a try has been scored, just as there would be in cricket about whether a catch has carried. Then the players and fans have to endure an interminable series of TV replays, each as unclear as the one before. Cricket can only use technology if it is willing to accept that there are occasions when it will not work. There's no point in expecting it to be perfect.
In fact, I'd ask whether perfection is something that sport should even be looking for in its umpires and referees. If officials were perfect France would never have beaten New Zealand in one of the great matches of the last Rugby World Cup, Diego Maradona would never have scored his Hand of God goal against England, and John McEnroe would never have got angry.
If Billy Bowden had been perfect at Edgbaston in 2005, Michael Kasprowicz would not have been given out caught behind off Steve Harmison with two runs to spare and, most likely, Australia would have gone 2-0 up in the Ashes that year. (And it's worth asking whether that moment would really have benefitted from a five-minute break while we all watched a reel of repeats from umpteen angles.)
For the Spin, sport is richer for the mistakes of the umpires and referees, so long as they are trying their best to give the right decision. What would the losers moan about, or the pundits talk about, or the fans rail against, if not the mistakes of the officials? But this is an argument that looks as though it has already been lost, the irony being that, so far, technology has not actually quietened the rumpus.
No, now this system is here, one thing is clear. The ICC must take the power of referral out of the players' hands and put it into those of the umpires. That, perversely, was one of the many things that Allen Stanford managed to get right that the game's governors have got wrong. If the aim is to aid the umpire, they should have control over the process, calling on it as and when they need it. It should be a stick to prop them up, not a rod to beat their backs. Otherwise, as Benson has shown, you are only making the job harder.
Posted by Andy Bull Tuesday 8 December 2009 13.05 GMT guardian.co.uk
Mark Benson, left, with Steve Bucknor Photograph: Rob Griffith/AP
The Turk could play a good game of chess, but he was erratic. On his day, and he had plenty of them because his career lasted 84 years, he could beat anyone, and did. In 1783 he bettered Benjamin Franklin, and in 1809 he was too good for Napoleon Bonaparte, who he defeated in only 19 moves. Depending on which story you read, Boney was reputedly so irritated by the loss that he ordered a rematch, this time insisting that the Turk play blindfolded.
The Turk lost to the best players of his era though. Great crowds turned out to watch his defeats to André Philodor and Godfrey, Duc du Bouillon. The fans found the Turk's inconsistency surprising. He was, after all, a machine. An automaton. The world's first chess-playing robot, built 150 years before that word had even been coined. Or so it seemed.
History later confirmed what sceptics had suspected all along. Inside all the complex clockwork workings of the Turk was a man working a set of mechanical controls by candlelight. It was 1854, after the Turk was accidentally incinerated, that the owner admitted the secret to the public: the machine was only as good as the man operating it.
A mere 155 years later, and the ICC still hasn't twigged. Umpire Mark Benson dropped out of the second Test between Australia and West Indies because of his poor health and, if the word on the grapevine is true, will retire from Test umpiring later today. Even if Benson did not quit as a protest against the technology which had been used to overturn his decisions, a stressful day's umpiring surely did nothing to improve his health. As ICC general manager Dave Richardson told the BBC, about Benson's withdrawal "health is part of it, the pressure that umpires are under - with or without the review system - is also part of it."
Advocates of TV referrals believe that they will eliminate inconsistency in decision-making and cut out errors. That is true in the case of run-outs and stumpings, which, like old-fashioned telephones, present a straight choice between button A and button B. Out or not out with a thick white crease line to separate the two.
That still leaves eight other ways for a batsman to be dismissed, many of them much less clear cut. Tennis, the sport which has most successfully incorporated Hawk-Eye, uses it only to map where the ball has landed, and again relies on white lines to delineate right decision from wrong. Cricket is trying to use the same technology to make far more nuanced decisions, trying to find answers that depend on interpretation, anticipation and, when it comes to judging the ball's future flight, guess-work.
The machine cannot do that alone. As with the Turk, the TV referral system is only as good as the man operating it. Anyone who thinks it will reduce controversy rather than create it has likely never heard of Donut Theory, which predicates that the likelihood of a mistake increases each time an extra screen and an extra human are added to a system, because, invariably, someone somewhere will be eating a donut rather than concentrating on their job.
Asad Rauf, who overturned Benson's decision that Shivnarine Chanderpaul was not out caught behind, could not be accused of lacking diligence. If anything he seems to have thought too much and reversed the verdict even though the evidence available to him was inconclusive. Hot-spot did not detect a thing, yet Rauf, using judgement honed over a long career in the middle, felt that the appeal should be upheld anyway. He is not the first man to find that being a TV umpire is a confusing remit which can conflict with instincts. Daryl Harper struggled with the job in the West Indies v England series last year.
These may only be teething troubles. They could be fixed by following the example of rugby union, where the referee on the pitch will ask of his colleague in the TV booth either "Is that a try?" or "Is there any reason why I cannot award this try?". Such a blunt enquiry limits the scope for interpretation which, after all, is what the art of umpiring has always been about. But rugby has accepted that there will be many occasions when the TV umpire cannot give an answer.
There have been innumerable occasions when it has not been clear if a try has been scored, just as there would be in cricket about whether a catch has carried. Then the players and fans have to endure an interminable series of TV replays, each as unclear as the one before. Cricket can only use technology if it is willing to accept that there are occasions when it will not work. There's no point in expecting it to be perfect.
In fact, I'd ask whether perfection is something that sport should even be looking for in its umpires and referees. If officials were perfect France would never have beaten New Zealand in one of the great matches of the last Rugby World Cup, Diego Maradona would never have scored his Hand of God goal against England, and John McEnroe would never have got angry.
If Billy Bowden had been perfect at Edgbaston in 2005, Michael Kasprowicz would not have been given out caught behind off Steve Harmison with two runs to spare and, most likely, Australia would have gone 2-0 up in the Ashes that year. (And it's worth asking whether that moment would really have benefitted from a five-minute break while we all watched a reel of repeats from umpteen angles.)
For the Spin, sport is richer for the mistakes of the umpires and referees, so long as they are trying their best to give the right decision. What would the losers moan about, or the pundits talk about, or the fans rail against, if not the mistakes of the officials? But this is an argument that looks as though it has already been lost, the irony being that, so far, technology has not actually quietened the rumpus.
No, now this system is here, one thing is clear. The ICC must take the power of referral out of the players' hands and put it into those of the umpires. That, perversely, was one of the many things that Allen Stanford managed to get right that the game's governors have got wrong. If the aim is to aid the umpire, they should have control over the process, calling on it as and when they need it. It should be a stick to prop them up, not a rod to beat their backs. Otherwise, as Benson has shown, you are only making the job harder.
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