BCCI’s reluctance to use the Decision Review System in the Ranji Trophy has been questioned yet again, with debatable calls being made in the recent past and earlier.
Cricket, like other sports, has now been blessed with advanced technology, enhancing better and fair decision-making in the game. While there remain arguments if the Decision Review System (DRS) isn’t fully free of loopholes, it does eliminate the situation of a batting or a fielding team being at the receiving end of an obvious wrong call. Human error is bound to happen at some stage, for umpiring is arguably the game’s toughest job, given its varied set of rules.
And so, it has been intriguing for the fans and perhaps the players too, as to why the DRS system hasn’t been put into use for the Ranji Trophy – India’s most prestigious domestic competition. In the ongoing 2022 edition final between Mumbai and Madhya Pradesh, Sarfaraz Khan survived a close leg-before call to seamer Gaurav Yadav, and would go on to register his fourth hundred of the season to guide his side to a first innings total of 374.
The BCCI backed its decision citing the ‘expensive’ cost for installing the DRS, while stressing on its trust on the umpires.
“We believe in our umpires. It’s an expensive exercise to use the DRS. The costs shoot up. How does it matter if there’s no DRS in the final? It’s time we trusted the umpires. India’s two best umpires (KN Ananthapadmanabhan and Virender Sharma) are officiating in this game. And what’s the end result? If you use it in the final, you will want to introduce it in the league stage of the Ranji Trophy too,” a former India player told The Times of India.
While it can’t be argued of the quality of umpiring personnel, for Ananthapadmanabhan and Virender Sharma, are seasoned campaigners, even the best in business have found the officiating job challenging. The BCCI recently made a huge sum of INR 48,390 crore from the Media Rights deal for the IPL – which sees complete usage of the DRS. Therefore, it does raise eyebrows when the aspect of cost is stated against the use of the technology in a premier domestic competition.
This has been quite the partnership for Madhya Pradesh in the #RanjiTrophyFinal
Centuries for Yash Dubey and Shubham Sharma! ⚡️#RanjiTrophy2022 pic.twitter.com/zlMYVNUCj8
— CricXtasy (@CricXtasy) June 24, 2022
The BCCI had introduced a ‘Limited DRS’ rule during the 2019-20 Ranji Trophy semi-final and the final. It was sans the ‘Hawk Eye’ and ‘Ultra Edge’ components, which are crucial to the entire process of referrals, as seen in international cricket and in the IPL. The decision to put the limited DRS in use then had come as a result of happenings in the previous season (2018-19), when Cheteshwar Pujara had famously survived two lifelines on caught-behind in Saurashtra’s win over Karnataka in the semis.
“The rigging (wiring) and derigging of all the equipment will be extremely costly,” a source told the TOI. “HawkEye means extra cameras are needed. Ranji is done with limited equipment. The argument will then be that why not for all televised games. Look, you can’t have a half-baked DRS. The last time, it was used for limited replays to see if there’s an edge or not. You can’t use the ball trajectory – a critical element of DRS.”
