Decision Review System has been in use and developing for over five years and yet it constantly causes consternation and doubt from all sides. If your child had shown similar progress at school to the DRS in the same five year period, you as a responsible parent would be finding another school for your child. It’s a no brainer.

By Daryl Harper (former ICC umpire) - as told to Bipin Dani.

Hawk-Eye and DRS: can it be relied on 100% (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let’s be honest. How many people have been convinced that the ball tracking accuracy is as good as the experts claim it to be? It must be a minority, surely?

When Graeme Swann appealed for lbw against Phil Hughes on the final day of the 1st Ashes Test, the batsman’s fate was determined by the Hawk Eye system. It depicted at least marginally 50% of the ball as pitching on the mat. It was a matter of the width of a line of stitching on the ball…surely down to a millimetre or two.

Nasser Hussain was delighted. When Michael Holding queried the system, an overhead shot was played to confirm Hussain’s assertion. This time the ball was shown from above to have at least 70% in the zone.

How did it increase from just on 50% to approximately 70%? That would equate to a movement of the ball’s position by about 15 millimetres!

(How did they create that overhead shot? There were no cameras on wires above the ground and the cameraman in the cherry picker had surely not leaned that far forward. Ah yes…the viewers are gullible. They’ll accept anything that a commentator tells them.)

Firstly you must remember that it is a system operated by humans.

Sometimes they forget to reset the system as in the Trott dismissal. Sometimes they simply replay the wrong delivery to the third umpire as occurred more than once in the 2011 World Cup. At that competition, there was no allowance for error factored into the calculations. I had to reverse a decision like the Hughes decision because I was wrong by one half of one millimetre. That was the explanation provided to me by Steve Carter, Hawk Eye chief man at that time.

Aleem Dar is not a bad umpire. He just made a bad decision with Stuart Broad. Can anyone declare that they haven’t lost focus for a moment at work recently…on any day…in any hour. Aleem Dar was at work but he lost the plot for a moment. His is still one of the best umpires going around. And I am still waiting to see which Indian umpire is good enough to replace the last Indian on the Elite Panel. His name was Venkat and he disappeared from the panel in 2006…before the newest generation of cricket followers had even been born!

Stuart Broad “How sad is he?” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If Stuart Broad thinks that being caught at first slip and defying the umpire to give him out, is the way to play the game, then how sad is he?

If the system was introduced to overcome the howlers, then don’t prevent the umpires from saving face when the howler invariably comes. To be quite frank, it doesn’t really matter much who umpires a Test match today…until a team exhausts its reviews.

Until then, any decisions can be reviewed and any number of errors righted. But once Australia frittered its reviews away with poor judgement, then the door was opened for a howler and Stuart Broad’s non-dismissal was a howler.

If the reviews were taken out of the players’ hands and given to the umpires, what would be the result?

In the short term, umpires would review far too many calls and the game could be delayed unnecessarily. There would be a period of adjustment. Eventually the stronger performing umpires would emerge and be identified by having the least number of reviewed decisions. In the third umpire’s chair, a full time television umpiring analyst would act swiftly and without fear or favour.

At the moment, most third umpires operate with the TV commentary running so as not to be surprised by any observations made by the Former Test Captains’ Club members. That is usually forced upon them by the ICC Match Referee who doesn’t want to be blind-sided by a comment from one of his former adversaries in the Comm. Box.

It was disappointing that the final decision in the Trent Bridge Test was conveyed to us by a commentator before the third umpire could complete his duties operating through the on-field umpire. Clearly the commentators had access to the umpire’s thinking and his conversation. Is this a desirable situation? Do we need a third umpire at all?

Thank goodness the ICC has seen fit to be proactive and to publish umpiring statistics from this memorable event. Normally it’s impossible for the ICC to put up its hand when it is sitting on it.

When the ECB demanded an inquiry into my role as TV umpire in Johannesburg in January 2010, there was an eerie silence from Dubai. I endured a seven-month independent inquiry that eventually totally exonerated me and every action I took in that Test. David Richardson, ICC Chief of Cricket Operations at the time and now CEO, has never once spoken to me about that inquiry…not at the time nor since…not even a wink or a nod. I was disappointed to not even receive a word of support from my chief.

For the sake of the game and not for the sake of the ratings, let’s see some quality management decision making from ICC. Either hand the review controls to the umpires or we’ll just have to take it on the chin with this flawed system that resembles a dog’s breakfast.

Despite rumours to the contrary, I support India. Believe it or not!

The BCCI has steadfastly maintained that it is not interested in using the DRS until it is perfect. Guess what? It never will be perfect, despite the claims of the financially involved parties.

Fancy anyone doubting the accuracy of the system? What impudence! At the 2011 ICC World Cup, we umpires gathered a collection of more than a dozen instances where the pitch tracking and trajectory prediction cartoons just did not mesh with reality.

Come on ICC. It’s time to swallow your pride and return this great game to it’s former status. The umpires are appointed to adjudicate. If you must use the technology, then give the umpires the tools to do their jobs.

Despite what we are told, it’s not rocket science. It’s a very popular game.

Thanks to Daryl Harper speaking exclusively to Bipin Dani for World Cricket Badger