Cricket in the hands of the technocrats

The decision today to dismiss the Australian batsman Khawaja is further evidence of the demise of the great game. Even with the mighty technology, the decision arrived at today was far from convincing and thus poses more questions than it answers.

When I was young and became involved in cricket, we either listened to it on the radio or watched on the television. Back in the eighties, the only technology employed was that for run outs where the margin was too fine to call or the umpire simply had his view obscured by a fielder being in the way. It worked very well and I honestly can't recall any contentious decisions because all they did in those days was to freeze the frames of film to see whether the bat had grounded in the crease first or whether the ball had broken the stumps first.

The problem is that people are never satisfied. We now have the game interrupted constantly by appeals and super slow motion and snickometers and anything else which the geeks can come up with the procure an advantage. The appeal today illustrated the danger of this approach. The job of the deciding referee was to ascertain whether there was a reasonable chance that the batsman was not out. Whether he felt unduly pressured I'm not sure but he really did get that decision badly wrong. The problem is that as you begin to lean more heavily on a greater variety of technology to help in the decision making process, you are more likely to be disappointed by them.

Disappointment with the decisions of umpires is part and parcel of the game at any level. Test cricket is no different. One of the problems now is that Test Cricket is in danger of become too truncated by this endless procession of appeals. They clearly can't go back to the old method now - and more's the pity - but they do face the very real danger of many spectators being put off watching.

The standards of the Australians up until day have been pretty poor by any standards so the game doesn't need anything else to lower its appeal for the spectator. I know it's not very fashionable, but how would England feel if they won a test match without once having had to resort to technology for a bit of help along the way? I know the answer because I've played enough sport to know that victory is always a lot sweeter when it is beyond dispute. England may well go on to win this series by a large margin but I hope they don't do so having overly relied on their snickometer friend. In their shoes, I would feel a lot better at the end of the series if we'd won it fair and square. The current approach reflects well on nobody.