Once bitten, twice shy. But in Team India’s case, the proverb, it seems, does not hold good with respect to the DRS (Decision Review System). For them, it’s once bitten, shy till eternity!
If Team India and BCCI felt it were on the wrong side of DRS when the technology made its debut during the India-Sri Lanka Test series in 2008, it's no different five years later. Despite India benefiting from DRS in the on-going Champions Trophy, BCCI’s stand towards the DRS has been same over the years – A BIG NO.
BCCI’s grouse against the technology is that it’s not 'fool-proof'. Even the change of guards at the top post over the years has yielded little. From Sharad Pawar to Shashank Manohar to N Srinivasan and now Jagmohan Dalmiya, India stands on a fixed pedestal from which it refuses to budge, despite the fact that other international cricket boards have given their thumbs up to the technology.
The BCCI continues to bowl DRS out by raising its index finger time and again. In the upcoming annual conference of the ICC in London, the Indian cricket board, despite its image being dented by spot fixing scandal recently, is likely to hold its position against the use of the review system.
Why the Indian Cricket Board is so much against the use of technology?
The first reason could be that the BCCI, which has become all more powerful over the years, is too arrogant to toe to the lines of the other cricket boards which think the system to be right, unlike its Indian counterpart.
Or the second reason could be that the Indian cricket board is simply oblivious to the advantages of using this technology.
BCCI is reading DRS as a half-empty glass instead of half-full. Its focus is more on its shortcomings than the advantages that this technology brings. If there had been instances of England's Ian Bell given not out through DRS during the 2011 World Cup league match against India (which had made captain Dhoni to remark that it is as an "adulteration” of technology and human decision-making), India had to thank the same technology which ruled Sachin Tendulkar not out during the semi-final clash against Pakistan in the same tournament. Tendulkar went on to play a match-winning knock of 85.
In the 2008 series against Sri Lanka when the DRS made its debut, India found the perfect excuse of blaming the technology for their poor or no performance as India lost the three-match Test series 2-1. During that series, India managed to get just one referral right out of 20 calls made. However the truth was that the Indian batsmen just failed to read Ajanta Mendis' carrom ball and his variations. But the Indian batsmen, who were too arrogant to accept their failures, found the scapegoat in DRS. BCCI too backed its cricketing stars and just failed to infer that India had a poor series against the Lankans.
Thereafter, the same story has unfolded over the years. The BCCI continues to slam the DRS, despite the technology having improved for the better.
In the on-going Champions Trophy, India got its reviews right on more than a couple of occasions because they played good cricket to get a batsman out and believed it was a human error that was depriving them of a wicket.
A former cricketer rightly commented on the DRS: "The technology is there to overturn a human's error, not to eke out a wicket in desperate situations."