From Imran Coomaraswamy, United Kingdom

Cricket's moral system is under review © Getty Images

The umpire’s word should be final. Questioning the judgement of the game’s arbiters is just not cricket. The ICC’s Umpire Decision Review System, which allows batsmen and fielding captains to ask for on-field decisions to be reviewed by a TV official, is detrimental to the Spirit of the Game and hence a recipe for disaster. Or is it?

I must admit that my reaction to the chorus of criticism directed at UDRS during England’s tour of South Africa by a (predominantly but not exclusively English) collection of pundits has been one of mild amusement. When ECB Chairman Giles Clarke fulminated against the “blasted system” because he felt that a “core principle of cricket” was “being destroyed”, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself and think ‘here we go again’.

Cricket is a haunted game. It is possessed by a mysterious Victorian Spirit. Many of its aficionados like to think that this Spirit - a moral code - sets it apart from other sports, making it "more than a game ... an institution," as the eponymous hero of Tom Brown’s Schooldays famously remarked.

Set at Rugby School in the 1830s, Thomas Hughes’ classic novel vividly illustrated the role played by public school cricket in the breeding of future empire builders. Meanwhile, other parts of 19th century English society also felt the influence of cricket’s Spirit.

In his English Social History, G.M. Trevelyan wrote: “If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt.” The great Cambridge historian believed cricket helped prevent revolution by civilising England’s lower classes. He was right, in the sense that it encouraged them to peacefully accept an inequitable status quo. The “core principle” alluded to by Giles Clarke of not questioning authority is the reason why cricket has been a perennial favourite of ruling elites. Trevelyan’s claim may have been made in jest, but the Spirit of Cricket did reinforce the position of the English aristocracy.

The writer Mike Marqusee (a New York Marxist, once dubbed cricket’s “iconoclast in chief”) perhaps explained it best: “Cricket brought together all the classes on the village green, but it did so in hierarchical fashion.” Playing cricket became a touchstone of Englishness, a measure of people’s right to be included, either in nation or in empire. At the same time, it became a means of ensuring people knew their places, both within nation and empire.

Within the game itself, poorly paid professional players somehow put up with being denied the rights afforded to shamateur Gentlemen until 1962, while Britain’s former colonial subjects put up with the MCC rules until the long overdue democratisation of the ICC in 1993. Just about the first ICC policy to be the implemented against England’s wishes was the introduction of neutral umpires in Tests, more than a century after football had seen the merits of appointing neutral referees. English opposition to the move was accompanied by incredulity at the suggestion that their umpires could ever be accused of bias. (Pakistan, whose officials received a disproportionate amount of criticism in the eighties, had actually been the first country to start campaigning for neutral umpires, back in 1980.) Set against this backdrop, the melodrama surrounding UDRS looks all too familiar.

In opposing the adoption of the system, the ECB found itself in a minority of one. Other cricket boards expressed, and continue to express, concerns about its implementation, but only the ECB has objected ‘on moral grounds’ related to the Spirit of the Game.

I like the review system. It eliminates obvious howlers, gives the on-field umpire the benefit of the doubt in marginal cases and is not overly disruptive to the flow of the game. It also seems that there are fewer instances of dissent and excessive appealing when it is in use. The Snicko-gate controversy during the recent Johannesburg Test was due to a failure by the gaffe-prone Daryl Harper rather than a failure of UDRS.

There is no denying that the system is a work in progress, however. New pieces of technology are being added one by one as the cricketing community becomes more confident in them. When UDRS was first introduced, the third umpire could only avail himself of super slow-motion footage, stump-microphone feeds and the ball-tracking part of Hawk-Eye. Now the latter’s predictive element is also in the decision-making toolkit, and soon Snicko and Hotspot will be standard issue too. While the amount of gadgetry employed is on the rise, the limit to the number of referrals permitted could well fall, in an effort to reduce the frequency of annoying tactical appeals. The limit has already been decreased from three to two unsuccessful appeals per innings and I would happily see it cut to five per match (perhaps with the additional caveat that a team cannot carry over more than three to the final day).

Personally, I am not so concerned about regulating the time taken to deliberate over calling for a review. I am less irritated by having to wait for captains to confer with bowlers and fielders than I am by having to wait for Jonathan Trott take guard. For me, by far the trickiest issue to be resolved is exactly who should pay for UDRS - the host cricket board, the host broadcaster or the ICC - as cost appears to be the biggest impediment to the standardisation of the system’s use. I hope this obstacle is overcome soon, as I wish UDRS every chance of success.

Trevelyan wouldn’t agree, but I think cricket could do with some of the spirit of the French Revolution. I am not suggesting that aggrieved cricketers drag uncooperative umpires to the guillotine, merely that we move beyond sanctifying officials’ divine right to rule one way or another. Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. Allowing players to challenge umpires in a respectful manner should improve relations between the two. It should remind the more unctuous officials that they are not meant to be the stars of the show and help players see umpires as ordinary human beings, who, for the most part, do a difficult job extremely well. Above all, it should ensure sporting justice is served with greater regularity. I hope the TV replay is here to stay. As for that old Spirit of Cricket, I think it’s time we gave up the ghost.

From Gopal Rangachary, India

Now that the Ashes are over, the post-mortems have begun. Shots have been fired at Ricky Ponting, Andrew Hilditch, the Oval groundsman and not least the standard of umpiring in this series. By any measure, it was embarrassing. Rudi Koertzen and Asad Rauf were poor, Billy Doctrove average, and Billy Bowden had a good series at the business end of the pitch , after a first ball shocker at Leeds, but seems to have missed several wickets off no-balls.

The umpiring incompetence has spurred a familiar debate- the use of technology. Sometimes that debate seems as polarized as a Michael Moore v Dick Cheney debate on healthcare. The supporters of technology fumed when Marcus North got a shocker at The Oval, while the opponents like Michael Holding made dark predictions of two-day tests if Hawkeye was adopted as the gold standard.

Having watched the referral system on trial during the India v Sri Lanka and West Indies v England Test series, I was mighty relieved to hear that the Ashes wouldn’t be subject to that experiment. That's a curious response, isn’t it? I am a strong believer in getting the decisions right. Consider this - Jonathan Trott appeared to be caught-behind off the first ball of the third day. The ball actually clipped his pad - clear on the replay- and Asad Rauf made a good decision. He could have easily missed that - and instead of contacting travel agents to plan his South African homecoming, Trott could have joined Alan Wells as the answer to a cricket trivia contest for cricket tragics (as players who played their only Test at The Oval ).

Rewind to the first Test between India and Sri Lanka at the SSC in Colombo- Virender Sehwag offers no shot to a ball from Muttiah Muralitharan that seems to have clearly pitched outside leg stump. Sri Lanka call for the review. Ian Bishop says: “That’s pitched outside the leg stump. Not Out will be the verdict". Lo and behold, we get the animations, and the graphics. Suddenly to the disbelief of all of us watching, we are informed that 10% of the ball was line with the leg stump. Out was the verdict.

Forward to Jamaica. Tony Hill gives Ramnaresh Sarwan out lbw, Sarwan calls for the review – replays indicate that it probably struck him high, Daryl Harper reverses the decision, Hawkeye then indicates the ball would have hit the top of leg stump. No wonder I was relieved we wouldn’t have this comedy being enacted in the Ashes.

The other side of the coin though, was when KP was given out to a ball pitching two feet outside the leg stump in he fourth Test between the teams in Barbados – a dreadful decision from Russell Tiffin. Even Harper got that one right by reversing it. So, you needed the Tiffins and the Asoka De Silvas to vindicate the referral system.

A decent referral system needs to address the following. Firstly, adjudicate only on the clear errors, and not on the marginal ones. Secondly, avoid the time lost gazing at the screen and the "tactical reviews"- where Monty Panesar asks for a referral for a stone cold lbw simply because the team has a referral left. The way to go about it, though I suspect the ICC isn’t waiting with bated breath, is this. Firstly, eliminate Hawkeye in its entirety. Get rid of the animations, the "mat", the random data - " ball pitched 2.5 feet in front of the crease" – etc. Don’t use Snicko and don’t use Hot Spot. If a decision cannot be clearly seen to be wrong on normal slow-motion replay, it doesn’t deserve to be reversed. Each of the Ashes stinkers- Michael Hussey and Ricky Ponting at Lords, Ravi Bopara at Leeds, Marcus North and Stuart Clark at The Oval , Ian Bell’s not outs at Edgbaston, Shane Watson's lbw not given at The Oval , Billy Bowden's non-decision on the first ball at Leeds - would have evidently been reversed on a simple slow motion replay. We didn’t need any of the complicated, obfuscating technology. This would ensure that only the more clear-cut wrong decisions would be reversed, and that the third umpire would have access really to the same faculties that the on-field umpires and, most importantly, the players have. The players don’t have a mat showing where the leg stump is, why should the third umpire? Cricket is not 100m racing, archery or shooting. It shouldn’t be a game of millimetres.

Also, forget the three referrals each innings per team. Let every team be allowed six referrals (unsuccessful) per match. They could use them when they bat or bowl, and in any innings. Also, the number of unsuccessful appeals should be tallied against the captains and an appropriate penalty system introduced. These measures (even just the first, and forget the one dealing with the captains) would reduce the number of frivolous or tactical references.

Some commentators talk about their discomfort with players referring decisions, and they would rather have the umpires make the call. That would be disastrous, and I would imagine we may have every serious appeal being referred. The problem is compounded with the predictive aspect of Hawk Eye. At the Oval , we occasionally saw batsmen kick away balls turning in, two feet away from the off stump. Each time it happened, the commentators would mutter: “The Umpire would be guessing. He can’t give that out.” With Hawkeye - if it shows the ball brushing the outside of off, the umpire, with the referral system in place, will be obliged to. Is that really good for the game?