01:27
Will look to introduce DRS in future – Kohli
In a fresh attempt to convince the BCCI, ICC general manager Geoff Allardice will travel to India next week to carry out a presentation on the Decision Review System (DRS). India are the only team to not have subscribed to the DRS after being the first to experiment with it, in 2008.
The BCCI’s reluctance is well known and recent board presidents – from N Srinivasan to Shashank Manohar to Anurag Thakur now – have expressed the same reservation on the referral system: that unless technology is 100% perfect, India will not use the DRS.
The ICC has consistently called for a uniform referral system to be used by all teams. In July, ICC chief executive Dave Richardson had revealed that its cricket committee and chief executives’ committee wanted the ICC to take “more control” of the DRS.
Incidentally, the ICC cricket committee’s head is Anil Kumble, also the current India coach. Kumble and Allardice have witnessed the research carried out by a team of engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who were last year asked by the ICC to independently assess the performance of the technologies that are part of the DRS: ball-tracking and edge-detection. The MIT team gave a detailed presentation to the ICC cricket committee during the annual conference in June.
Allardice is likely to highlight the MIT research during his presentation, which is likely to be attended by the top brass as well as key officials of the BCCI. The key point that Allardice will drive home is how the DRS and its various components have become more reliable since the system’s inception in 2008.
It is understood that the ICC wanted to do this presentation earlier, but a convenient time could not be worked out. “They wanted to showcase improvements that have been made after the MIT research,” a BCCI official said. “This is something they have been wanting to share for quite some time. We need to wait and see what are the improvements exactly, considering DRS is made up of two to three elements.”
India’s upcoming home Test series comprise five matches against England followed by a one-off Test against Bangladesh, before ending the season with a four-Test series against Australia. It is understood both BCCI and ECB have not worked on the MoU for the series so far and hence it is too premature, officials pointed out, to speculate whether the DRS would be used or not.
The BCCI official was not sure whether senior Indian team members like MS Dhoni and Test captain Virat Kohli, along with Kumble, will attend the meeting considering they were busy with the ODI series against New Zealand.
During his reign Dhoni never categorically expressed his opinion on the DRS. In contrast, Kohli, as soon as he took up the Test leadership, has consistently said he is open to the referral system.
Nagraj Gollapudi is a senior assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
Source: ESPN Crickinfo