The Field:
Decision
Review System and the Dressing Room Intervention
Technology has undoubtedly embraced almost
all domains of human life and sport as a human activity is of no exception to
that fact. A recent controversy emerged during second test in the ongoing
India-Australia test match series-2017 about the on-field behavior of the
Australian captain Steve Smith gives us an opportunity to understand some of
the ways in which the game of cricket evolved after the introduction of DRS
technology. Such technologies which
Emily Ryall (2016) calls as adjudication
technologies in sports has remarkably changed sporting activities in
various respects. Many of the sport
administrative bodies have had reservations about the implementation of such
technologies in elite sports. In cricket, there are two kinds of DRS are
available at present; Umpire Decision Review System (URDS) and Player Review
System (PRS). In the first, the umpire can take the help of a technologically
aided TV umpires help to decide the otherwise less accurate instances. The
latter gives the opportunity for the playing teams to review the on –filed
umpires’ decision with the same process. Till recently, the Board of Control of
Cricket in India was reluctant to adopt PRS (Player Review System) technology
due to the alleged non-reliability of the mechanism(s) which enables the
latter. They resisted the use of PRS for bilateral series till last year, but
now started showing some faith in such technologies perhaps with the claims of
improved reliability of the latter.
.
However there is only a limited number of
reviews are available for each team in elite cricket. So clever decisions from
the part of teams is required for the careful use of the reviews. The
instruction given in the rule book tells that the striker from the team which
bats should take a decision on whether to review or not review the decision of
the field umpire. It can be done in consultation with the non-striker who is
physically positioned closer to the umpire who makes the decision at the time
of making the decision. For the fielding team, it is the captain who should
request for the review in consultation with the concerned players. This is
considered as a fair means of strategically making use of the available
reviews. Rule 3.2 (c) of the ICC
categorically says the following.
“Under no
circumstances is any player permitted to query an umpire about any aspect of a
decision before deciding on whether or not to request a Player Review. If the
umpires believe that the captain or batsman has received direct or indirect
input emanating other than from the players on the field, then they may at
their discretion decline the request for a Player Review. In particular,
signals from the dressing room must not be given” (p. 35)
The underlying presumption upon which this
practice is based is that the ‘play’ must happen within the field and not outside of out. The importance of ‘field’
in any game of sport as a space of ontological importance is not disturbed by
this practice. The test of sporting abilities should happen transparently in a
given space called the field. On the other hand, when the players decide to
take reviews in consultation with some agency which is positioned external to
the `field of play it is an unfair practice given the existing rule. This has a
strategic importance which can affect the ontological course of the game, the
winner/loser, statistical records etc.
With the advent of television replays and DRS
based on the video footages and other allied technologies, the sole epistemic
superiority of the filed umpire has diminished. An important change is that the
video footages are made available to the spectators, television viewers and to
the dressing room. Any one belong to these groups, if she is knowledgeable
regarding the rules is a much better epistemic position compared to the field
umpire. But the ontological authority
that is the authority to make decisions in the field is mostly remains with the
field umpires except in cases where the decision is reviewed by any one of the
teams.
The dressing rooms’ access to the live video
footage of the game gives them a privilege which we shall call ‘technological
privilege’. Though no replay would be shown in the screen between the on –filed
decision and the players’ decision to review the former, the dressing room has
access to the video of the particular bowl bowled. They may not be able to look
at it repeatedly but that real time access on an electronic screen is enough to
give solid clues with regard to the accuracy of the decision. In real-time
telecast of cricket matches at the elite level, every ball bowled is shown from
a best superior position as that of an umpire. The camera facing the batman
from a straight position may not give the accurate information to the viewer in
real time (for lbw decisions), but it is still an advantage that the batsman
lacks.
What if the players decide to quickly consult
their dressing room about reviewing a particular decision of the umpire? Steve
Smith’s gesture of turning back to the dressing room when he was declared OUT
for lbw by the filed umpire is such an attempt, though he claimed that it is a
‘brain-fade’. This goes against the
spirit of the game, if we see that in terms of fair play because by asking the
dressing room, the batsman is trying to rely on a piece of information which is
not otherwise available for him. The batsmen by doing that is already taking
the help of a proto-adjudicating technology, (if not the technology itself)
well ahead of time, which the TV umpire later relies on. The
use of technological privilege to determine the strategic use of DRS amounts to
cheating in the present scenario. The
player’s dressing room act as a strategic factor which it shouldn’t be, given
the rule. This is a clear case of trespassing the ontological territory of the
play and this is an undesirable act given the existing rules of the game.
We may thematically conceptualize the notion
of field of play is part and parcel of sporting activity. It is a clearly
defined space where only players and a few officials have the permission to
enter into. The game begins and end within
the field. Any other intervention would be unauthorized and counted as
trespassing. Information flow is even restricted between the field and outside
the boundary when the play is on.
But with the advent of technology, especially
adjudicating technologies, the notion of field of play started getting changed.
There is exchange of information and intervention by the factors from beyond
the boundaries to the actual course of the game. So the game goes well beyond the boundaries
set around the field. In this backdrop,
the Steve Smith incident however would not be a problem of cheating in future.
The dressing room may be one day part of the acceptable norm of the game. I
submit that this is an open possibility. This concern emerges from the fact
that game of cricket like any other sport is a technological mix now a days which does
not give importance to the within- the –field matters of the game alone.
External technological intervention is not completely alien to sports in
general now as it happens in the case of umpiring. Moreover technology blurs
the traditional boundary between the field and non-field. Technological privilege of the dressing room may have a role in future DRS.
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