@Bijed
Good post. Have a few replies.
The player who has been sawn off in this scenario is unlucky, surely?
Yes. But in pre-DRS days, you had one source of bad luck - a poor decision. Now, we have two. Not only did Ross Taylor get a poor decision, but he was also 'unlucky' that his teammate burned the review. He was unlucky on two counts. And this new source of bad luck - the loss of a review - has created a whole new source of angst that has never existed before. People driven by this angst now want 2 reviews in an innings. They have lost sight of what reviews and DRS were meant to do (remove outrageously bad decisions), and have instead gone on the path of not trusting the onfield umpire at all, and wanting every single decision to be reviewed with tech. Posters on CW already want this and don't understand why that won't actually solve the problem.
The problem is the internet here, as your most visible protagonists in this sort of thing rarely seem willing to 'chalk it down to a tough decision and move on with their lives', even though everyone would be much happier if they did.
This is a fair point, and which is why I don't want the ICC making decisions based on the outrage of people over the internet.
But if the game is still fundmentally basing itself around the tenet of never questioning the umpires, then I think that needs to change.
The game is fundamentally built around being a reflection of life. It's slow for the most part, but then you get crazy moments or passages of play that can change the direction game. It values a whole host of great personality traits - of which the main ones have always been self discipline, patience, adaptability, and the ability to accept that sometimes life doesn't go your way. Getting a bad decision doesn't mean you lose your composure or quit the game. You keep trucking on. The Preamble to the Laws is well worth reading:
https://www.lords.org/mcc/laws/preamble-to-the-laws-spirit-of-cricket
Respecting the authority of the umpires is not the key point. The umpires themselves report to a match referee and a central ICC body that constantly evaluates and grades them. They're under as much scrutiny as the players, and aren't the lord and master of the game as one would be lead to believe. But the ability to respect an umpire despite copping a bad call, that's central to the spirit of cricket, IMO. Not just how you react to the decision, but how you talk about the decision off the field, how you talk of the umpire of the field, and how you accept the outcome of the game, despite what you may think of the quality of decision making.
All these people now saying that NZ was the rightful WC champions - they're going against the Spirit of Cricket, in my book. That is not on. But that culture of feeling justified in questioning decisions made by umpires/match officials/administrators has been fueled by the ICC accepting the DRS, IMO. It has set a precedent that has lead to poor behaviour from players on the field (w/regards to umpiring decisions), and to the fans perceptions of the match officials. It has legitimised behaviour the is based around not respecting the authority of the match officials. To me, that's a bad thing.
Right again, though I view minimising the scope for human error causing controversy to be a very worthy goal
We have had as much, if not more, umpiring controversy since DRS than before it. It's a worthy goal, but is this the way to go about achieving it?
Don't really agree here tbh. Yes, umpiring mistakes are rarely 100% the reason behind a result going a particular way (and it's impossible to say how a match might have unfolded subsequently had one not occurred), but when they do happen, such mistakes are a massive problem imo. In the match yesterday, England definitely had the rub of the green in this respect and whilst you can't say for certain they'd have lost otherwise, I think a reasonable assessment on the balance of probablities would reach this conclusion. When you say 'games are not being won or loss solely on umpiring decisions', yes, in any tight contest you can point to any number of specific moments, Boult on the boundary for example, as being the difference between the two sides, in sports, players and teams should live and die, so to speak, on the strength of such moments and whilst I agree that people should generally make peace with the fact that officiating decisions can and will go against them, that doesn't in any way 'legitimise' them.
I'm not trying to legitimise bad decisions.
I think you agree with me, despite starting off saying otherwise. I think we agree that any time there is controversy over umpires decisions, it's usually in a tight game. We don't fuss over a batsman getting sawn off when his team wins by 8 wickets, for example (Jason Roy vs Australia). We only care when it is a scenario where you can claim that the umpire's decision would have made a difference. We also agree that, in those situations, there are hundreds of other little moments during the game that could have made a difference too.
So we both agree that poor decisions may have been a factor. But for me, that's it. They are just a factor. They alone don't determine the game. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for better decision making. What that means is that the outrage over these decisions is always out of proportion, because people criticize them with ll the emotion that comes with losing a close game. For example - the bad caught behind Roy copped vs Aus has gotten a lot less attention than the LBW decision he survived first ball vs NZ. Even tho the Aus decision was objectively way worse. Why? Because all the emotion of the WC final is spilling into people's judgement of that LBW call.
I was always taught that you just accept the things you can not control and focus on what you can. That was the cricket culture I grew up with. If you don't want to be sawn off LBW, use your bat. Don't want be given out wrongly caught behind, then stop playing and missing. The umpire's judgement is out of your control, and if you lose a tight game, you focus all your energy on what you did wrong, and not what the umpires may have done wrong.
That's what is disappearing now that DRS is in play. More people want to argue that it was the umpires that cost NZ yesterday, ignoring that Guptill burned a review, Boult bowled poorly and dropped a key catch for six, and CdG played what is perhaps the worst innings in World Cup Final history.
People have always complained about umpires. DRS was brought in to make them happy. But they have not stopped complaining. Heck you have Daemon and Flem arguing that not only was the umpire wrong to not give Jason Roy out, but that Hawkeye was wrong too.
There is no way having more tech or more reviews will ever satisfy fans who think like that. Which leads me to this:
So naturally the solution is to get rid of it
You're putting words in my mouth, first of all. I've never said this.
Implementing DRS was opening a pandora's box, IMO, and now there is no shutting it. You can't roll it back or scrap it entirely. You just have to accept that players being able to review an umpires decision will be part of the game moving forwards. And, when used as intended, it's not a bad thing in any stretch of the imagination.
I think, as and when technology improves, it should be available for umpires to utilize. Making better decisions is always the goal.
But, at the end of the day, it will be humans who make decisions. There is no fighting this or getting away from this. You're not going to have robot umpires, and you're going to have situations where some person make a call based on their judgement that you as a fan won't like. The solution is not to remove this person. The solution is to just get on with your life.
. Just think LBW should remain an unattractive mode of dismissal and reviews should be weighted to keep that balance . I also don't like the use of the review system as a weapon in general . It's there to overturn injustice rather than to tease out bonus wickets in my opinion .