Int'l Cricket Council CEO David Richardson said on Sunday that the ICC is considering using "Snicko" technology in the next Ashes series in Australia, according to Ed Osmond of REUTERS. The current series between England and Australia "has been dogged by controversy surrounding the Decision Review System" and there have been problems with the "HotSpot" technology which is supposed to show whether the ball makes contact with the bat. Richardson said, "Snicko will probably be the first bit of technology introduced. It's always been reliable." "Snicko," which uses sound from stump microphones, "has not been employed by the third umpire because it causes too much of a delay in decision-making" (REUTERS, 8/23). The PA reported although Richardson admitted it could be time to "take a backward step" with regard to the DRS system, he played down the need for wholesale changes. Richardson: "The time is right to maybe take a backward step but not to forget the statistics. Just looking back over the five Tests, we again see that without DRS we would have had a correct decision percentage of about 91 percent, which is lower than we like and lower than the average. With the DRS, we've ended up with the correct decisions about 97 [per cent], so again an improvement of around five or six percentage points" (PA, 8/25).
