Idea From Canada

Desperate times calls for desperate measures. I have been so depressed by England's performances in Pakistan that I have decided to avoid listening to reports of their last two matches by leaving the country and spending my Christmas holidays in Canada, who have little interest in cricket following their recording of the lowest ever One Day International score in the last World Cup against Sri Lanka. Naturally this means that my blog entries are likely to be infrequent until I return on 7th January.

It appears that other sports also suffer from the delays caused by the referring of decisions to slow motion replays. In Canadian Football (which is like American Football but the pitch is bigger, there are four downs not three and the players aren't paid as much) each team can insist that three decisions in the match be reviewed by television replay. This could be usefully applied to cricket, as it would unburden the umpire from the responsibility of referring decisions and ensure that there would only be a limited number of interruptions.

My main point is that cricket could learn from other sports, all of which are struggling to apply the use of television replays without fatally undermining the officials or spoiling the game's entertainment value.