One DRS review per team would be better for the game, feels Josh Hazlewood
Hazlewood has an interesting suggestion
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Australian pacer Josh Hazlewood has come up with an interesting suggestion with respect to DRS and believes that both the teams and umpires will āuseā technology properly if there was just one review available. Hazlewood feels that teams need to focus on using DRS just for the howlers.
After being introduced back in 2008 as an experimental ploy, the Decision Review System (DRS) has now become one with the sport of cricket, but it has also undergone a ton of changes. While initially, bowling and batting sides were handed two reviews each per innings with the idea that both teamsā reviews will get āresetā after the 80-over mark, this rule was changed in 2017. In October 2017, the āresetā rule was removed and teams were instead allowed to āretainā their reviews in case of an umpireās call; this was not the case in DRSā previous avatar and it was a change that was welcomed by cricketers across the world.
Recently, owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, in the wake of the āneutral umpiresā rule getting temporarily removed, ICC awarded teams a third DRS review in order to make up for the officialsā inexperience. This third review, too, has been welcomed by teams but Australia pacer Josh Hazlewood, remarkably, is of the opinion that teams should be awarded just one review per innings. According to Hazlewood, such a move would improve the standards of umpiring, remove the bias and make teams use the reviews wisely, preferably for a howler.
"I'd review them all day if I could but to have a better impact on the game, I think one might work better," Hazlewood said on part two of The Unplayable Podcast's Ashes Revisited series.
"If you just had one each per innings then people would use it totally differently. I think umpires can fall into a trap of umpiring a little bit differently depending on who's got reviews left and how many they've got.
"They've got to umpire based on nothing there as well, but if you just had one each you'd save it, you wouldn't use it early unless you were positive and that's what it's there for, that howler."
Hazlewoodās partner Mitchell Starc, meanwhile, on the same podcast, revealed that he is fit as ever and would be eyeing to clocking close to 160kph on the speed gun. Starc said that he will be ready to āpush the limitsā but admitted that he will be wary of doing so, given he suffered a serious injury the last time he cranked up his pace and touched the 160kph mark.
"It would be nice but at the same time the two occasions I've been up around that (160kph) mark I've snapped my foot," he said.
"Hopefully that's not the case but when everything's going well, that rhythm is happening and conditions suit, then I can get that speed gun up. Perhaps that extra time in the gym and extra time off I might be able to push the limits again,ā Starc said.
Both Hazlewood and Starc will, most likely, feature in Australia's limited-overs tour of England in September, that will be played in a biosecure environment.Ā
