Time for cricket to go techno

Lord's and Twickenham are often the butt of unkind jokes about the conservative old farts who people their corridors, and their love of pink gins - London Dry with water and a dash of bitters.

The establishments, of course, are the traditional headquarters of the ancient games of cricket and rugby respectively.

Only very recently has the game of rugby bestirred itself and, despite the apoplectic objections of the diehard conservatives, begun to harness modern technology for the good of the game.

Now it is general practice when a try is in dispute for the referee to call on the "techno-ref" for help in deciding the legality or otherwise of a try. This is a wonderful advance in rugby, and has done a great deal for the game. Often it is impossible for the referee to see whether the ball has been effectively grounded.

Take these two situations. In (a) an attacker makes a desperate dive for the tryline against an equally desperate attempt to tackle him out of the field of play. Was the scorer in or out? In (b) a heap of players has collapsed across the line: now was the would-be scorer able to ground the ball satisfactorily or was he held up and denied the score?

Tries generally decide rugby matches, so like paying your TV licence, introducing technology in this area was "the right thing to do".

There aren't many other areas where the camera could really help - except perhaps a player flying down the touchline and scoring with the linesman uncertain whether he trod on the line or not. That, and a conversion when the two linesmen - and remarkably it does happen - are in dispute as to whether the ball went between the poles or not.

But that's about as far as you can go in rugby. The game isn't that fast that most decisions can't be made by the ref himself with the help of his linesmen.

But in cricket it's an altogether different story. With the game becoming increasingly competitive at international level and so much riding on the outcome of Tests and ODIs in the way of bonuses and sponsorship deals, it's essential that human error be cut to a minimum.

Take two Tests that were completed this week. England beat Sri Lanka by three wickets in the second Test in Kandy to level the three-match series at 1-1. It was an acrimonious contest, to say the least, and largely because contested decisions ignited much ill-feeling. Heated words were exchanged as temperatures in both teams ran high.

As the ethic of "walking" has all but disappeared from top level cricket in instances surrounding caught-behind decisions, it's essential that the camera come to the aid of beleaguered umpires.

The umpire gets just one shot at it. He has to make his decision in a split second. With television playing such a significant role in the popularising of the game and the repeated slow motion replays to which every decision is subjected to, it is obvious that the all-seeing eye that TV offers must be utilised whenever necessary.

Moving from Kandy to Georgetown's Bourda Oval and closer to home, from a South African viewpoint, let's take a look at just one controversial decision.

Jacques Kallis in his first innings knock of 50 that was just starting to gain momentum, was given out lbw by England umpire John Hampshire. We heard ad nauseam, as one replay followed another, how the ball "clearly pitched outside offstump"; how there was "doubt about the height of the delivery" from Nixon McLean; and how "Kallis clearly got an inside edge before the ball hit his pads".

It was as clear as mud. What a marvellously exact science, with the aid of television and microphones imbedded in the stumps, hindsight has become. It enables just about anyone to be a better judge than the umpire. The poor man is held up to ridicule, even contempt.

If the "third umpire" can be called into play for a stumping, a run-out and to test whether a fielder managed to cut off a boundary or not, then he should definitely be called upon to help the umpire to decide on lbws, caught behind and other controversial decisions.

Anything less is a travesty of justice. The game's administrators must make up their minds. Is it the romanticism of traditional cricket, with just two umpires inevitably making mistakes for and against both teams, they want? Or is it pinpoint accuracy? They can't have it both ways.