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The fear of change. At one time or another, it afflicts us
all. Imperceptibly, the audacity of youth becomes the trepidation of
middle-age, only willpower preventing our curiosity from congealing into
timorous conservatism and an future spent beating psychological retreat from
the ominous shadows and the unlocalizable noises, withdrawing, defensive, into
creasebound shotlessness and the perverse comfort of its at-least stable apprehensions.
Cricket and conservatism are familiar bedfellows.
Notwithstanding the superficially radical trappings of Twenty20 – its
off-the-peg razzmatazz a ‘meme’
replicated worldwide and thus already an establishment of sorts – cricket, at
the administrative level, is a culture disinclined to change (not off its own
bat, anyway). Ask cricket supporters anywhere in the world to conjure forth an
image of the sport’s establishment and chances are they’ll still picture the
MCC members at Lord’s, the jowly, patrician personification of fusty
traditionalism.
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| ruling class |
While this traditional view of traditionalism is itself
perhaps now something of an archaism given India’s rise, it remains important
to enquire whether such conservatism is institutional – part of the territory
of the game’s elite, as it were, intrinsic to the game’s decision-makers across
cultures and ages – or confined to an English old guard trapped in the
post-Imperial aspic, fearfully trying to control and check an environment that
just won’t sit still. Are all boards averse to change, for the simple reason
that genuine innovation always threatens to pull the rug from under their feet?
Most pertinently, is the BCCI – de facto
leader of the global game – really a bastion of trenchant conservatism? Judging
by its steadfast refusal to adopt the Umpire Decision Review System (DRS), the
answer would seem to be affirmative; then again, it has been in the vanguard in
embracing the all-singing, all-dancing, Brave New World of Twenty20. So, which
is it: revolutionary or reactionary?
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| cricketing arms race |
Before trying to answer these questions, it is absolutely crucial
to bear a couple of things in mind regarding the concept of evolution, be that
cultural or natural. First, not all innovations are necessarily advancements, nor are they inevitable –
things might have always happened differently, or not at all. There is no master
plan. Second, despite popular misconceptions around Darwin
Returning to cricket, then, the BCCI’s tight embrace of the
Twenty20 golden goose is merely a line of
development, not ‘progress’ per se. Perhaps the MCC and Test cricket are to
feudalism as the BCCI and T20 are to capitalism, for in all ages the emergence
of a new ruling class comes from seeing and harnessing the cutting edges of
wealth and power that will submerge the old order. Simplifying a little, capitalist
power is increasingly a matter of brute quantities and the BCCI is duly erecting
its dominance upon India’s gigantic population and the depth of its affection
for cricket, exploiting the huge domestic revenues from the economic boom
(boom) created by this made-for-TV spectacle, and in so doing submerging the
old order, yet all the while stabilizing and taming the revolutionary force of
these flows that achieved the dominance in the first place.
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| BCCI executives consider DRS |
the ostrich must
evolve
It is too early to tell whether the shift in cricket’s
geopolitical centre of gravity will lead to the slow withering of Test cricket,
but the problem in this regard has less to do with the quantity of T20 being
played as it does a (perhaps connected) general depreciation of Test cricket –
certainly not something the BCCI deliberately sought out, but, all the same, a
side-effect of their and Lalit Modi’s (inescapably semi-blind) behaviour in
cricket’s ‘adaptive landscape’. There is still widespread bewilderment that the
BCCI have been so obstinately anti-modern in their stance on DRS, particularly
when its introduction was provoked, in large part, by umpiring
mistakes in the infamous and contentious Sydney Test of 2008 that cost India
Firstly, their misgivings about the accuracy of
ball-tracking technology (Hawk-Eye or Virtual Eye alike) are either a simple
smokescreen concealing a powerful lobby within the team, or, more likely, a
sincerely held yet tenuous and barely plausible stance, one that’s causing them
to play a good way down the wrong line, as it were. As with evolution, DRS, at
present, need not be ‘perfect’, a fittest design. It is merely a resource. Basing
your opposition to DRS on the fact that it isn’t foolproof is akin to sticking
to a homeopathic potion because the $10 billion medical facility up the road
doesn’t cure 100 per cent of patients.
Anyway, despite the alarmists’ caricature, the umpires are
not obliged to devolve agency wholesale
to the technology. In cases in which the video evidence is drastically
contradicted by the virtual reconstruction of Hawk-Eye – generally off the
bowling of spinners when there is little distance between ball pitching and
striking the pad (as happened with Phillip
Hughes in Sri Lanka last August) – surely they can, as arbiters, choose to
rely on a combination of their eyesight and the camera. And if Hawk-Eye does have a blind spot, then at the very
least a TV replay helps umpires decide where the ball pitched: not perfect; an
improvement. And let’s not forget that, in the context of cricket officiating,
the human eye is but an imperfect ball-tracking device.
Secondly, the absolutist belief that the umpire’s verdict is
final is symptomatic of what might, in a manner of speaking, be called a
‘theological attitude’. Around the time of the launch of DRS in 2009, Ian
Chappell wrote that the unquestioned acceptance of the umpire’s decision was
the foundation of the game (certainly, his compatriot, Simon Taufel, a
five-time winner of the ICC’s Umpire of the Year award, is cutting an
increasingly crestfallen figure as more of his decisions are overturned). But
surely the point is the one lucidly made by the late Peter Roebuck, that
“nothing is more calculated to reduce authority than allowing obviously
erroneous judgement to stand”. Ultimately, Chappell’s is an absurd stance, tantamount
to saying he would rather have ‘honest mistakes’ than greater justice – truly,
it belongs in Lewis Carroll. What sort of judicial system deprives its accused
of the right of appeal if there is further evidence to be considered? Well, one
that confines authority to the will of an sacred and/or incontestable individual,
like the absolutist monarchies or totalitarian dictatorships. Such a blind
insistence on the sanctity of the Umpire’s thunderbolt judgement disingenuously
denies a basic human obstinacy on the part of the principles of justice, the
unwillingness of those less fatalistic souls simply to acquiesce in a culture
of (eminently avoidable) human errors that could prove decisive, could radically
alter your career, your life. Everything in our instincts protests.
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| umpires and the judgement from on high |
One obvious compromise, at least on the face of things,
would be to allow the umpires themselves to refer upstairs any decision they wish to, which shows that Authority
per se is not being undermined,
only that the means for arriving at decisions is being broadened. However, the
likely consequences of this move would be that umpires would tend – much as happens
with line decisions – to refer all
decisions in which there was even a scintilla of doubt (which, given the
fallibility of humans’ perceptual apparatus, would be many). If a Darwinian
perspective views behaviour as fundamentally the striving after an advantage, there
is simply nothing for an official to gain, and everything to lose, by making
decisions based on fallible sensory evidence alone. Umpires wrongly failing to
refer decisions would soon be ‘rested’. Moreover, this approach would do little
to foster a culture of self-policing and restraint – for many observe that the
players being invested in the decision-making has helped engender a more
cordial, less suspicious atmosphere – since players would be ‘incentivized’ to
appeal for everything, duly preying on the umpire’s doubts.
DRS = advantage India
Clearly, the successful implementation of DRS – and the
assent of the game’s stakeholders thereto – requires an adequate number of
cameras shooting at an adequate number of frames-per-second to ensure the
ball-tracking technology functions as it should, which itself raises serious cost
issues that the ICC’s general cricket manager, Dave Richardson, recently said
he expected would be factored into broadcasting tenders. There are also
improvements to be made to Hot Spot – Vaseline might be best avoided if we are
to lubricate the wheels of justice – whilst DRS needs to be universally applied
for the much trumpeted Test Championship to have any credibility. Failing this,
players with the newly acquired habits and behaviours that DRS inculcates in
nations that have embraced it will face deep culture shock when they visit
other, sceptical lands such as India – with all the potential for
incomprehension, rancour and rifts that one already gets in other walks of life
when moving between traditional and modern forms of authority, or vice versa.
Leaving aside whether or not the Indian reservations are
legitimate, here’s the thing that no one seems to have recognised: DRS could be
precisely the mechanism that revives India Nagpur
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| Monty got a Raw Deal? No. DRS is a boon for spinners |
At any rate, in the recently concluded series between Pakistan and England India India
Not only is India the fecund (crumbling) soil from which
sprout many an autochthonous twirler, it is also the land in which batsmen grow
up most adept at playing spin – with
the bat, not the pad. And therein lies the point: there is no need for any
high-mindedness or some noble gesture ‘for the good of the game’ for India India
will still have to go to South Africa ,
Australia and England
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| DRS: an opportunity in the 'space of possibilties' for India's Test fortunes |
DRS, T20 and feedback
in a competitive milieu
As we said at the outset, cricket administration is, by and
large, defensive and wary of novelty. India Table Mountain on the Cape .
Yet for every skeptical Baum asserting that “cricket needs to wean itself off an almost infantile dependence”, there is an Osman Samiuddin who understands the economic pressures and political kowtowing underpinning the refusal to push for the compulsory adoption of DRS: “The problem is the way [the BCCI] have bullied member
boards behind the scenes – at the risk of damaging lucrative bilateral ties –
into making DRS implementation non-mandatory. And in that, the bullied are as
culpable for allowing it to happen. It is not up to that much-imagined but
non-existent, independent decision-making supra-ICC body to enforce DRS. It is
up to individual member boards.”
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| Dave Richardson has seen the future |
Now, it is perhaps naïve, or romantic even, to suppose that
the primary goal of an individual national board – much less the profit-monitoring
businessfolk that own IPL franchises – would be the holistic husbandry of the
game for the benefit of all its stakeholders. That would be the ICC’s role.
Even so, while India Richardson
Whatever their motivations for rejecting DRS and yet
simultaneously backing the T20 form (particularly its ‘domestic’ competition), together
it amounts to a double abandonment of the common sphere of Test cricket and a
blow, moreover, for the notion of the collective health of the game. It is
difficult to shake off the feeling that the BCCI and the IPL is now – perhaps semi-consciously
– leading a sea change, an evolutionary line that will eventuate in the oft-predicted
slow diminishment of the Test format in the eyes of players increasingly drawn
to the bright lights of T20. And it is here that the parallelism between
natural and cultural evolution – the same abstract dynamics, albeit on a vastly
different time scale – is instructive. Given that, in the shared ‘adaptive
landscape’ of players and other national boards alike, the BCCI’s economic
power is both a resource and a constraint, we can see the modern cricketer’s rationale
increasingly taking shape along the lines of: it’s a short career – therefore,
short game, big money, no brainer. (And the likes of Keiron Pollard have shown
that large T20 contracts do not depend on status carried over from the Test
arena.) If that is the case – and
that remains a big if – then Test
cricket, sustained on prestige alone, becomes increasingly archaic and prey to
extinction.
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| Pollard (L) and Gayle: Twenty20 freelancers |
Fear often prevents us from peering into the hurly-burly of
a historical moment and taking the adaptive steps that must be taken. But the open
present and its ‘space of possibility’ is as much a question of opportunity as risk.
DRS presents the chance, in a thoroughly competitive milieu (although, in
cricket the stakes are low compared to, say, football with its threat of
relegation; but cricket-as-a-whole’s environment is hugely competitive), to
maximise the efficacy of their predominant cricketing cultural traits – playing
spin, bowling spin – in order to gain an advantage. However, so too, in a more
fundamental way, does turning their back on Test cricket and shoring up their hold
over T20, while drip-feeding that format into the grass roots, cementing those
traits in the techniques and imaginations of new generations of cricketers.
After all, if you are the apex predator in a particularly resource-abundant and
seemingly stable environment, why seek to turn back the clock and relinquish
control? Why not simply push ahead, reinforce your dominance, rip the meat from
the skeleton of Test cricket and hoover up your competitors’ greatest assets?
Or would the cricket community and the BCCI powerbrokers be well served
remembering that, no matter how dominant a predator, it still needs some prey on
which to feed?
* An abridged version of
this piece was published on sportingintelligence.net.
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