India to use DRS for England Tests

NEW DELHI: India have agreed to use Umpire Decision Review System (DRS) for the upcoming Test series against England on a “trial basis” to “evaluate the improvements made” in the system.

India had played in the first series with umpire reviews, against Sri Lanka in 2008, but this will be their first bilateral contest since then with all the components of the DRS — including ball-tracking technology — in place.

“We are happy to note that Hawk-Eye has institutionalised all the recommendations made by BCCI, and we confirm that this improved version of DRS will be used on a trial basis during the forthcoming series against England,” the The Board Of Control For Cricket In India (BCCI) president Anurag Thakur said.

“Based on the performance of the system and the feedback that we will receive, further continuation in forthcoming series will be decided.”

One of India’s biggest concerns with the DRS, the predicted path of the ball after it hits the pad in the case of lbw decisions, will be addressed by the use of ultra-motion cameras. The manual intervention in determining the point of impact will be minimised by the introduction of Ultra Edge, which according to a BCCI release had been approved by Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT]. It will also eliminate the possibility of another touch after the first impact affecting the predicted path or point of impact.

“Earlier, there was a possibility that the operator would have missed a delivery and hence an lbw appeal could have been missed,” the BCCI release said. “Now, Hawk-Eye has developed the technology to record and save all images so that in case an operator fails to arm the tracking system, the images can be rewound and replayed.”