BCCI decision to oppose DRS was right
When the Board of Control for Cricket in India had, a full five years ago, strongly opposed the Decision Review System and since then ensured that it was not used in matches the Indian cricket team played, many Western commentators slammed the move and claimed that the BCCI had flexed its money-power to coerce the International Cricket Council into giving in to its demand. The board stands vindicated today, with the DRS coming under the lens in the ongoing Ashes series between England and Australia. Ironically, these are two teams that have traditionally backed the DRS, which is why the system is functional in the matches they play. The BCCI had heeded protests by Indian players against the technology that is supposed to help the Third Umpire take decisions on close calls, especially in cases where the bat is suspected to have only just contacted the ball. While both England and Australia have reiterated their stand to persist with the DRS, the issues which have been raised clearly indicate that the technology is far from being failsafe. In that case, the very purpose of depending on it for definitive decisions is defeated. There is hardly any credible voice among Indian players (past or present) or other experts that unambiguously supports the DRS. BCCI interim president Jagmohan Dalmiya is right in saying that the Indian team would endorse the DRS only when the technology involved leaves no room for doubt or manipulation. The latter is especially important, since it bears on the current controversy that has enveloped the Ashes series. Australian television channel, Channel Nine, has alleged that some players were using silicone tapes on the bats to cheat Hot Spot, a particular DRS technology which, being heat-sensitive, picks up the heat generated when the bat nicks an oncoming delivery even to the slightest extent. Since the silicone tapes absorb the heat, Hot Spot fails to work. Hot Spot inventor Warren Brennan is so concerned that he has tweeted to former England captain Michael Vaughan that the latter should “investigate why players are using fibre-glass tape on the edges of their bats”. This is not Brennan's fanciful thinking; experiments have demonstrated that silicone (or fibre-glass) tapes do have a “dulling” effect. The two teams have indignantly denied their involvement in such cheating, but the issue here is not about the integrity of players; it's about the reliability of the system.
If the DRS can be fooled into giving wrong decisions by the simple application of a silicone tape on the edge of the bat, surely it does not deserve to be used until this, and other, bugs which relate to other forms of DRS, such as Hawk-Eye, are fixed. Proponents of the system believe that glitches are part and parcel of any new technology and they can be mended as the DRS gets to be more extensively used. That may be so, but many wrong decisions will be given and the course of games dramatically altered in the process.