KEVIN MCCALLUM: The problem with tech in sport ... is people

The 1,200th Test match, hosted at Durban on November 13 in 1992, had many firsts. Kepler Wessels’ 118 was the first time any batsman had scored a century for two countries. It was SA’s first home match since March 1970 before isolation.

Jimmy Cook became the first player given out to the first ball on Test debut, which may be a golden-golden duck. Omar Henry become the first player of colour to play Test cricket for a unified SA team. 

It was also the first Test with a third umpire and, with India on 38 in their first innings, it became the first time technology was used to adjudge a run-out decision. Brian McMillan bowls to Sachin Tendulkar, who gets enough bat on it so it squirts to the left of Jonty Rhodes at point. Tendulkar sets off for a run. Rhodes sweeps, throws, Andrew Hudson runs in from short leg, catches and breaks the stumps.

Trevor Quirk on the microphone for SABC, sounds calm: “Now, a historic moment in world cricket. Umpire Cyril Mitchley not sure, and indicating to the third umpire in the umpire’s room with a monitor, a television monitor and anxiously the players wait to see the decision if there was a run out or not.”

Karl Liebenberg, the third umpire, takes just one replay and some slow motion to determine that Tendulkar is clearly out of his ground and hits the button for the green light. Tendulkar out.

Sunil Gavaskar, on air with Quirky, sighs. His world has come to an end: “Yes, indeed. We have the entry of technology and, perhaps, as a lot of purists and old-timers like myself might say, the exit of tradition. As you can see, it is so very necessary in close decisions like that.”

Jimmy Cook wished the technology had been used a little more for his close decision. Tendulkar at second slip took a catch off Kapil Dev that Cook believed had bounced short.

“Steve Bucknor was at the bowler’s end, and he didn’t know,” Cook told espncricinfo a few years ago. “Anyway, I walked off. In the change room, everyone to the man was like, ‘Jeez, we cannot believe that. That ball clearly bounced.’ 

“That was the first match with the third umpire. Otherwise I would have had to ask them ‘did you catch it?’ But because you had replays, I stood there and said ‘let the replay show me, because I was convinced that I was not out’.”

But the third umpire and the technology were not ready for catches that bounced short. Hell, TV tech still can’t get short catches right, with guesses about finger splits, blades of grass, the Earth’s curvature and whether Jupiter is in retrograde or Mars is splitting the bull’s horns. 

Ali Bacher was the driving force behind the use of technology in cricket and that global 1992 debut, and in 2010 he was vocal about wanting it to be used more in football, particularly after a series of glaring errors by referees at the World Cup. Fifa hadn’t been keen on using technology but the debate had been started. And here we are. 

Technology? Where would be without it? Confused? Cross? Concerned? Clueless? Which is also where, almost 31 years after Liebenberg lit the green light, rugby and football are finding themselves confused more often than they had hoped. Confused. Cross. Concerned. Clueless.

Forget the conspiracies, the VAR mess at the Liverpool-Spurs game was incompetence at its most comical and careless. “Daz” England, the VAR, who infamously said “check complete” without checking the completed decision, sounded like he was having a chat with mates in the pub, and those mates were his fellow referees. The ones who picked up the mistake immediately were the guys who do the technology bit and push the buttons. They called for the match to be stopped, saw the flaw in the thinking and, most importantly, the communication.

Perhaps it is the use of referees in dark rooms with all that beeping technology that is the problem. Dark rooms are no place for referees. Dark rooms are for quick fingers on buttons, where tech wizards draw accurate offside lines, track balls spinning square and let the numbers tell the story instead of the words.

Send referees, TMOs, third umpires and VARs on communications courses. Teach them how to speak in unambiguous sentences that make clear what is needed, what is being decided and then communicate all the information they need. Try or no try. Offsides or not. Did the Cook ball bounce? Did Geoff Hurst’s goal go over the line? 

Stop the discussions. Sentences that start with “what I’m seeing is ...” usually end up with the sort of answers that someone heard from their sister’s friend who was told by this other bloke watching the footy in the pub. That guy’s name was probably Daz, and referees like Daz are the problem with technology in sport.