England and Australia have pledged their support for the Decision Review System (DRS) after ICC’s General Manager Cricket, Geoff Allardice met representatives of both the teams and the ICC umpires in Durham, the world body said on Thursday.
Allardice described Wednesday’s meetings as “very constructive”, with the teams and umpires supporting the continued use of the Hot Spot technology in the final two Tests of the series that will be played at Chester-le-Street from Friday and at The Oval from August 21.
“We acknowledge that the DRS has not performed as effectively during the past three Tests as it has in other series. The purpose of my visit was to meet with the teams to listen to their feedback, and to identify potential improvements to DRS moving forward,” said Allardice.
“It was very encouraging to hear both teams reiterate their support for the use of DRS. Some of the ideas that were suggested during the meetings could improve the system, and will be considered further by the ICC,” he said.
Allardice said that the performance of Hot Spot was discussed during the meetings.
“Hot Spot is an advanced technology that helps us to detect edges. It is conclusive — when there is a mark we know the bat has hit the ball. In working with the operator over several years, we know that the majority of edges are detected by Hot Spot, but there are occasions when a fine edge isn’t picked up,” he said.
“If there is no mark on Hot Spot, the TV umpire can use replays from different angles to see whether the ball has deflected off the bat, and he can listen to the sound from the stump—microphone to determine whether the batsman has edged the ball. Either deflection or sound can be used by the TV umpire to make his final judgement.”
