ICC and PCB - The 'unfathomables'

The ICC announced last week that the Cricket Committee recommended the DRS be used in all test series as well as the 2011 World Cup.

Yet again, the ICC will be conducting an experiment in their flagship event. Before the 2006 Champions Trophy in India, the ICC announced that reviews would be introduced at the tournament and, if successful, would be in force during the 2007 World Cup.

Thankfully, sanity prevailed a couple of months later, and the executive board threw that idea out of the window.

The DRS has so far, to the best of my knowledge, never been used in limited over internationals (50 overs or 20 overs). Without trialling it in bilateral series or other 3-4 nation tournaments, it would be downright stupid to use a World Cup to introduce the reviews system.

We still don't know how much time would be spent in a typical 50 over game on both teams appealing against the umpires' decisions. Wouldn't that result in the game being stretched beyond the normal 3 hr 30 mins / 3 hr 45 mins duration?

The ICC wants the broadcaster to shell out the money for the technology used. Maybe the right way to 'sell' the concept to the broadcaster is that they would have at least 10 minutes more per innings of telecast time, and thus something like 30-40 more advertisement slots.

The ICC's argument is that poorer (associate & affiliate) countries that don't benefit from the DRS shouldn't have to subsidize countries that will play games using the reviews system. The broadcaster's counter-argument should be that they don't want to pay up for a system that is unproven, and could potentially work against their favourite team.

Imagine if ESPN-Star, Sky Sports or the Nine Network paid up for the DRS, and the decisions kept going against India, England or Australia. For sure the broadcaster, and the audiences, would hate it!

From all evidence so far though, there is a lot more fine-tuning needed with the DRS, and I humbly submit that the World Cup is not the stage for a trial.

On 9 March, the PCB banned 4 players (2 indefinite, 2 for 1 year) and fined 3 others, who were placed under probation for 6 months.

Less than 3 months later, 2 of those banned and all the 3 who were fined are in a probables list for the Asia Cup and a tour of England. The 16 year-old ball-muncher is made captain.

I apologize. I totally give up trying to make sense out of the ICC's and the PCB's actions.

Labels: 2011 world cup, afridi, ban, icc, pakistan, reviews, selection