Sachin Tendulkar on DRS : More authority needs to be given to third umpire

"All three umpires should work together as a team and if the third umpire spots something, he should be in a position to tell the on-field umpire, 'I feel this is not out' or vice versa. You can overturn that decision. It's all about getting correct decisions, so you must go all the way to get it right," 43-year-old Tendulkar was quoted as saying by Mid-Day tabloid.

The BCCI agreed to the use of DRS in the ongoing Test series against England after having for long opposed the use of the ball-tracking technology. The hosts had a mixed start to its use in the first Test with Cheteshwar Pujara being wrongly given out lbw in the second innings after the batsman and Murali Vijay, at the other end, did not call for a DRS review although replays showed that Adil Rashid’s delivery had pitched outside the leg stump.

India Test skipper Virat Kohli has urged non-strikers to be more proactive and observant. However, Tendulkar said the onus should be on the three umpires to get decisions right.

"In spite of Pujara being not out and DRS being there, he still ended up losing his wicket. Should the third umpire have the authority to intervene and correct the decision? I feel, yes. See, the batsman at the other end is thinking about his own batting. He is planning how he is going to tackle the bowler. That period [at the non-striker's end] becomes a breather for the player. He takes some time off and thinks about what he wants to do and in that fraction of a second, he can miss something," Tendulkar explained.

Tendulkar welcomed BCCI’s decision to agree to the use of DRS in the ongoing series, and stressed on the need to regularise its use across world cricket. The Indian cricket board had been vehemently against it since the 2008 Sri Lanka tour, saying that the technology wasn’t foolproof.

"There were a few things that we did not like. We were not convinced about the technology and as I said, over a period of time, things changed. The technology is better and there has been more and more research, more consistency in what they are trying to achieve,” Tendulkar said.

"We did not agree to certain things because one part of the world was using snickometer. In other parts, there was hotspot. There was a match… I think a Zimbabwe versus Bangladesh Test where no one knew what was being used. The idea is to standardise things for all parts of the world. Laws in cricket must be standardised no matter which part of the world you play in," he added.