From Tareque Laskar, India

Test cricket is simply The Format of the game. Defending Test cricket has become like defending the classics – too many people are going on the lines of ‘hey Beethoven is the best because Beethoven is Beethoven, you know – classic and timeless’. That’s not quite the right line of reasoning, I am afraid. If you have to make people believe that the value of something being classic stems from the fact that it is considered, well, classic you’ve got yourself running around in circles more confusing than Google +’s.

Gideon Haigh, a writer I tremendously admire, wrote an excellent piece where he said ‘Cricket owes the Test match everything’ because it remains the last bastion of excellence. Peter Roebuck, another writer who’s an absolute pleasure to read also wrote about how Test Cricket is the ‘Primal Contest’ between bat and ball. ‘Cricket is a contest between bat and ball, a struggle that reaches its highest form in the Test arena’ goes his opening line echoing the ‘excellence’ argument of Haigh’s.

Both the views highlight how a Test can have so much wrapped in itself that unravels as a treasure of trove of understanding human and sporting behaviour, learning your own little life lessons and of course enjoying the craft of cricket, with all its nuances and nips and tucks.

I reluctantly learnt to love the format because my formative years mostly comprised the 1987 World Cup and those endless tournaments in Sharjah punctuated by an incredibly boring India v Pakistan series that was a 0-0 draw. But when I saw a few Tests down under and then some dramatically swinging ones in England, my understanding of the game and its nature was thoroughly reformed.

Test matches’ rigor and cannot be navigated by cricketers who learn by rote, it needs scholars of the game who unfurl in front of us their deep and layered understanding of the game – an apex of their experiences that has (and will have) no parallel. Boring contests, the ones that critics use to discredit Test cricket are a result of the absence of good conditions (one-sided pitches – whether favouring bat or ball are plain bad) and motivation (matches need good context and well-rested and hungry players).

Me and my friends got so influenced by Tests that we started playing only Test matches in our backyards! We would love the fact that a narrative would unfurl over the week not knowing which of our teams will emerge winners (or maybe even a draw) at the end of the week. Every night we’d quietly think of what will happen tomorrow and consider all possibilities.

Test cricket is great because your appreciation of the game is elevated to a different level by it. Much like Beethoven is great because you understand so much more about music when to listen to one of his symphonies.

From Abdul R. Siddiqui, USA

A few bad memories stain all the good things Misbah has achieved © AFP

Residual value is defined as the worth of something after it is no longer useful in or of itself. Considering the fear we have of being useless, coupled with the reality that there comes a time in everyone’s life where they repeatedly wake up less productive than the day before, it makes sense that we often strive for residual value; it is our savior. That we can tell ourselves we are useful because of what we have already accomplished allows us to embrace and accept that we are, in and of ourselves, useless.

Perhaps that is why reminiscing is the favorite activity of those who have essentially completed their run in life. However, the only way in which such reminiscence can provide solace to someone who sees their life fading is if those memories being recalled are good ones. Not just good, in fact, but good enough to outweigh the bad ones.

And herein lies the tragedy that many people have to face: good memories outnumber bad ones but are often unable to outweigh them. This is what eliminates the residual value of our accomplishments, this stigma of a few bad memories that stains all the good things we have achieved.

That is the stigma my hero, Misbah-ul-Haq Khan Niazi, will have to bear; that is his tragedy. And it is truly a shame, considering Misbah’s career. All his life, he was denied a permanent spot due to an ingrained belief in Pakistani selectors that anyone past their late teens or early twenties is not a long-term prospect for the team. Ironically, even after a debut at 26, Misbah went on to play for more than ten years.

Now, after finally becoming a permanent fixture in the team at 37 years of age, he genuinely isn’t a long-term prospect. What makes this injustice even more painful is that he is providing something to the team that it has been lacking for far too long: a batsman whose form actually improves following a captaincy appointment. Not just that, but Misbah even handled the Test side admirably following the innumerable crises that occurred last year and still kept his form.

Misbah leads from the front, and to do so in a team that sometimes makes that job incredibly difficult, that is admirable. And then there was the innings at Mohali. Perhaps not much else needs to be said. That is the stigma he bears; that is his tragedy.

From Arun Sagar, France

A relationship hard to explain © Pradeep Mandhani

I once sat next to Rahul Dravid. Now, if this was being written by one of the illustrious group of cricketers, former cricketers, cricket writers and journalists who contribute to this site, that opening sentence would be followed by an interesting story or tidbit: ‘I once sat next to Rahul Dravid in the Lord’s dressing room, and he seemed …’; or ‘I once sat next to Rahul Dravid on the flight home from the Australia tour, and he said …’, and so on. But in my case, that first line pretty much says it all. I once sat next to Rahul Dravid. Or rather, I sat behind him, with my back to his.

It was 2010, in a London restaurant where I had dropped in to visit the owner, an old friend. Dravid was there with people who knew people I knew, and so it should have been the easiest thing in the world to get an introduction and have a brief chat, maybe even get a photograph. Instead, flustered and tongue-tied, I sat down at the table behind his and ordered a drink. What could I possibly say to Rahul Dravid? A gushing ‘Oh God I’m so thrilled to meet you!’? A confident handshake, a casual ‘Hi Rahul. Big fan.’?

And so I said nothing, and later on that evening someone else took that celebrity photograph. They posted it online; you can’t see me, I’m out of the frame on the right. I can’t help secretly wishing that I had snuck into it somehow.

As you’ve probably guessed, Dravid is my favourite cricketer. My only other brush with cricketing royalty was as a small boy, when I was introduced to Lala Amarnath in a tailor’s shop in Connaught Place. I didn’t know anything about cricket at the time, and I didn’t know who this bespectacled old man was. But twenty years of cricket-obsession later, the sight of Dravid up close, in flesh, had produced in me the physiological symptoms one usually associates with schoolgirls meeting rock stars. In fact, I almost wished I was a schoolgirl, so that I would have license to behave like one.

Being a fan of a sport or of a sportsman is a state of mind that’s hard to communicate to someone who isn’t. Among people who spend their time browsing Cricinfo, who rhapsodize about straight drives, who stay up at odd hours to watch Test matches in which their country isn’t even playing - that communication isn’t needed. Most of us here, I imagine, are cricket-obsessed, cricket-lovers, cricket fans, call it what you will.

The complicated mix of emotions involved in this obsession, this fandom, is implicitly shared. I’m sure I’m not the only Indian one who, when he or she hears ‘1998’, thinks first not of anything from their own lives but of Sachin at Sharjah. That was the year I gave my Class 10 Board exams and went on my first trip abroad, but my most vivid memory is that straight six off Kasprowicz. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who still gets the chills watching and re-watching those twin hundreds, somehow getting excited even though I know exactly what’s going to happen next.

But try explaining this to someone who isn’t really a cricket fan and who isn’t a fan of any other sport. Try explaining why the failure to chase 120-odd in Barbados in 1997 still hurts if you were an India fan at the time. It doesn’t just ‘rankle’ or ‘disappoint’; it hurts. I don’t remember much else about 1997, but I remember the details of that innings, the umpiring error, the airy shots. It is a painful memory of a deeply painful experience.

Or, to the newest generation, try explaining why Sydney 2008 was so traumatic. Or why Perth was so cathartic. Try explaining, actually putting into words, what exactly was so special about Sachin scoring the winning runs to bring up his match-winning, fourth-innings big-score-chasing century in Chennai in 2008. But your non-sports-loving audience, no matter how intelligent, open-minded and sensitive they are, no matter how well-read in other fields, just won’t get it. Oh they’ll ‘understand’, they’ll explain, they’ll rationalise, contextualise … but they won’t really get it, feel it. They won’t be able to comprehend, to truly grasp how events in the field can have such a profound and lasting effect on your emotions.

And this gets even worse when one tries to explain being a fan of individual sportsmen, especially in a team sport. When facts and figures, lists and averages don’t work, you’ll find yourself coming back to the adjectives you started with, and desperately seeking new ones – stupendous, magnificent, satisfying, gratifying, fantastic, incredible. You’ll add accents and emphasis. If you’re writing, you’ll italicise.

And this is hardly a surprise. There are many things, emotions, experiences that are hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived them. It’s not easy to describe why a certain song, painting or film is so profoundly moving. Not to mention more fundamental emotions; think of what falling in love is like – try explaining that to someone who hasn’t felt it.

Of course, people far more insightful and eloquent than I have written reams about sport and sports-men and -women, how they embody our strengths and our frailties, how and why we can live their victories and defeats, their triumphs and disasters. And many have written about individuals, about Dravid for instance, extolling his many virtues, evoking why he is a uniquely human – as opposed to superhuman – hero, why he personifies all the best qualities not just of sportsmen but of his sport itself.

But I suspect these writers are most (best?) appreciated by those who know these feelings, who recognise them within themselves. Just as one can divide the world into people who know what falling in love feels like and those who don’t, I suspect one can divide the world into those who know what it means to idolise a sportsman, and those who don’t. In fact the schism is even more profound, because one can always be surprised by falling in love for the first time, while sport is either written into one’s DNA or it isn’t.

And so, as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve embarked on one long digression from what I really wanted to try to write about. I wanted to describe exactly what I felt that London afternoon, with the sunlight on that Soho street outside and the cool drink in my hand, as I strained to hear the conversation at the next table. That trip to England was a memorable one for me for many reasons that would be easy to explain - personal reasons, professional reasons. But what I remember most vividly, with both pleasure and regret – poor inadequate words - is how fast my heart was beating, and how I could not bring myself to say hello to this man, this man I worshipped so, sitting just a few inches away from me.

From Kartikeya Date, USA

Should the third umpire be allowed to pro-actively correct errors in lbw appeals? © AFP

LBW is a unique law in cricket, possibly in all of sport. The law first appeared in 1774. At the time, it said the striker would be out if he puts his leg before the wicket with a design to stop the ball and actually prevent the ball from hitting his wicket. The law hasn't changed much for 237 years now.

In its current form, an lbw decision is judged at two distinct levels. The first judgement is about what actually happens - where the ball pitched, where it hit the pad, whether there was bat involved and whether the batsman offered a shot. The second judgement is about what doesn't happen. Would the ball have gone on to hit the stumps had the pad not been in the way? These two judgements cannot be made with equal certainty. The first event can be observed, but the second requires conjecture. Ball-tracking provides an alternative method of making this conjecture. If we are to assess this new alternative, it has to be compared reasonably to the traditional method used by umpires.

This comparison has already been made. Through internal tests, ball-tracking providers claim the technology is much more accurate than human umpires. The method used for this test has not been published. Nevertheless there are people who don’t need tests to be assured that ball-tracking is accurate and gives a definitive prediction about the path of the ball. Then there are those who don't trust ball-tracking because it has contradicted the expert judgement of umpires and players on some occasions. Still others are uncomfortable with it because precious little is publicly known about the method used in the prediction, and whatever little is known suggests that the method is removed from the manner of cricketing judgment.

What everybody should agree is that as a disembodied data-processing system, ball-tracking will always be far more consistent than even the best human umpire. When it comes to accuracy, if accuracy is measured in millimetres, a fair comparative study between ball-tracking and the umpire should take into account the capacity of the umpire to make mistakes. This is to say that in some lbw appeals an umpire may rule one way in real time, but when shown the replay might conclude that he made a mistake. This difference between an error and a mistake is crucial if one has to make a reasonable comparison between the relative merits of ball-tracking technology. It is not clear if this distinction is made in ball-tracking providers claims.

There is a difference between an error and a mistake as they are applied in this debate. A margin of error provides a range of answers within which the actual answer is claimed to be. A mistake is by definition outside the margin of error. So how might the margin of error be measured for human umpires?

Take the 50 best umpires in the world. Show each umpire the same set of 100 lbw appeals in random order, and record how the umpire rules for each appeal. Allow the umpire to see each appeal as many times as he wants, in order to minimise mistakes - not errors - in judging where the ball pitched, where the point of impact was, and whether or not there was an inside edge. If you then put together the range of rulings for each lbw appeal, you will find that some appeals will have been ruled out by a majority - or even all - of umpires, others will have been ruled not-out by a similar majority. A third set of appeals is likely to divide expert opinion. A few may even have half the umpires rule them out, and the other half not-out. So you will get some appeals in which the decision is out with a high degree of certainty, while in others the decision is out but with marginal certainty. For example, if 45 of the 50 umpires rule that a given appeal is out, then one can conclude with 90% certainty that the correct decision in the case of this appeal was out.

Here, the margin of error is not measured in terms of the distance from the stumps in millimetres. Instead, it is a measure of the consensus of expert judgement, with some effort to control for the human capacity to make a mistake.

If an umpire rules not-out in real time in a case similar to one that the vast majority of umpires in our experiment above ruled to be out, then the umpire has made a mistake. In other, more marginal cases, both decisions are acceptable, as is often the case in some lbw decisions. Two recent examples involving Sachin Tendulkar come to mind. In the World Cup semi-final, he was given out lbw by Ian Gould, only for the decision to be reversed. It was a perfectly reasonable, albeit marginal, lbw decision. On day five of the Lord's Test, Billy Bowden ruled Tendulkar not-out to a Stuart Broad appeal. It looked close, but Tendulkar had made a forward stride, and the not-out decision was reasonable. In both instances, other good umpires might have reasonably disagreed with the decisions on the field.

In the current DRS method, ball-tracking is used to verify an umpire's judgment. This can only be considered fair and reasonable if it is established that umpires reach their conclusions about lbw appeals using the same method as ball-tracking, but with lesser rigour. This is not the case. If Gould had a chance to see a replay of the lbw decision he gave against Shivnarine Chanderpaul in Barbados, when an offbreak hit him outside off and was turning further away, he would surely reverse his original decision. However, if the ball-tracking technology was asked to re-compute the decision against Tendulkar in the World Cup semi-final, it would come back with the same answer.

That is the difference that ball-tracking brings to lbw decisions. Under DRS Tendulkar was definitely not-out, albeit by a wafer-thin margin. With umpires ruling, marginal decisions remain truly marginal which is to say, that if the exact same appeal happened multiple times, there is no guarantee that the same decision would be reached on each occasion. Ball-tracking manufactures certainty. It is worth remembering that this certainty is currently situated beyond the actual ball-track, in all the arbitrary boundaries that have been set through the use of the umpire's-call zone and the 2.5m rule.

Ball-tracking gives cricket a choice. The lbw law could reasonably be given over completely to ball-tracking technology. Even existing technology would be good enough for this. The umpire on the field need not get involved at all. The ICC can introduce an elaborate set of arbitrary limits on what should be given out and what shouldn't, and we would get consistent lbw decisions. The umpire's-call zone could be far more sophisticated than it currently is. It could be redrawn to take in account whether the bowler is bowling over or round the stumps. It could be much stricter on leg stump than on off stump (cricket is a side-on game, and the leg side is considered to be the blind side, which is why you can’t be lbw to balls pitching outside leg stump). The umpire could be spared the humiliation of being put to the test every single time.

Or the umpire's hand can be strengthened, by allowing the third umpire to pro-actively correct errors about pitching point, point of impact and inside edges in lbw appeals, and, most crucially, by allowing the third umpire to use his expert judgment to advise the umpire if his on-field decision is obviously wrong with respect to the predicted path. This will not require-ball tracking. A simple replay would do.

Where ball-tracking will come in handy is to record each lbw appeal, and compare it to other appeals in other games. We could learn a great deal about lbw decisions this way, with ball-tracking not deciding an appeal but being used to build a database of lbw appeals and decisions.

Bowlers will probably prefer the first option, and will vigorously want rules that require lbws to be given even if the ball is shown to be grazing the leg bail. Batsmen will probably also prefer the first option, but will want the arbitrary limits to be very strict, and the benefit of doubt to be interpreted generously in their favor.

Whatever choice is made, the game will do well to keep in mind this basic fact in mind. The problem is not that umpires lack the expertise. It is that umpires are human.