Dhoni’s Veiled Criticism Of Umpires Uncalled For

At most times, MS Dhoni likes to call a spade a spade. The press conference at the end of the first Test match against West Indies was no different as the Indian captain said all that he had to say about umpiring in his own terse, but effective way.

Quizzed about the forgettable match that the umpires had, Dhoni said, “If the correct decisions were made, the game would have finished much earlier and I would have been in the hotel by now.”

The ICC stipulates that criticising the cricket match officials could lead to a reprimand, if not a fine. To be fair to Dhoni, he hadn’t directly panned the umpires but it wouldn’t be too off the mark to say that he had stretched the rule-book. It remains to be seen whether the ICC will look to gag him down for any such future connotations.

The main issue, however, remain the same; India’s unreasonable opposition to the Decision Review System. The premise that is that the use of DRS is not fool-proof and hence will not provide correct decisions.

Many, including me, would not disagree with the fact that the DRS may not give out correct decisions all the time. But rest assured, in its most basic format, DRS eliminates any glaring howlers in the game of cricket with utmost ease. The further use of the more costly technology, the Hot-Spot, reduces the error to much lower. And if the Snicko-meter can be used in conjunction with the Hot-Spot, the error percentage is almost negligible.

If one were to discount any conspiracy theories surrounding the BCCI-opposition, one has to go back to 2008 to search for the reasons behind India’s resistance to the system. The DRS was being used for the first time in international cricket and India and Sri Lanka were the teams involved. Sri Lanka used the system much more commendably than India, who looked woefully out of depth and got it wrong almost each time they called for a review.

To add to India’s chagrin, there was one particular decision that the decision review system got wrong against them in that series. Virender Sehwag was given out when the review system thought that the ball had hit the back-leg whereas it had actually deflected off the front foot.

The woes compounded in the 2011 World Cup when a rather ridiculous change in the rule saw Ian Bell being given not-out despite the decision review system showing the ball to be hitting the stumps comfortably. And unfortunately for the rest of the world, it had come against India.

The use of Hot-Spot and Snicko-meter will obviously help but the BCCI contends that the two are too costly to use. This comes as a surprise to many given the financial clout that the BCCI holds in the cricketing world.

So while Dhoni may like to call a spade a spade, one cannot escape the touch of irony in the whole affair – whatever goes around is coming back around for the Indian team.