Tuesday, July 23, 2002 It seems like only yesterday. But it will be 20 years this Boxing Day. Twenty years since modern technology bounded on to the world's cricket fields - sorry, arenas - with one giant, irreversible leap.

It was the fourth Test of 1982-83, Australia versus England, when the MCG's enormous electronic scoreboard made its screen debut. It all went swimmingly enough. The match provided the most thrilling of climaxes, with Bob Willis's Englishmen nosing home by three runs. And nobody seemed too perturbed by The G's gleaming new baby, although Willis noted that whenever you wanted to check the score you were greeted by the sight of a gargantuan meat pie or a motor car instead.

Twenty years on, and the MCG's enormous electronic scoreboard has spawned dozens of tinpot imitations at grounds - sorry, stadia - the world over. Twenty years on and where are we? All the frantic, superfast, technological gee-whizzery has had the paradoxical effect of slowing the game to a slumber. At the big grounds these days bowlers amble distractedly back to their run-ups, fieldsmen dawdle into position, all 22 eyes gazing at the electronic screen in the sky.

That same screen now nudges umpires in the right direction on run-out and stumping appeals, an innovation which seemed harmless enough at the time and may even be, dare we say it, a good thing. Its effect has been to drag the game down further into its stupefied slumber. The artificial breaks in play while the men in white coats inspect their gadgets are contemporary cricket's ugliest blemish.

And has it been worthwhile? Has the furore over foolhardy umpiring adjudications died down? Not a jot. It has not declined, merely been deflected. Feverish scrutiny is now applied to the few provinces where the umpire is still king: lbw shouts where the ball may or may not have pitched in line; bat-pad appeals where the ball may or may not have skimmed wood. When you ask someone the score these days, rarely are you greeted with "40 for 2" and a shrug of the shoulders. Instead comes the tiresome refrain: "40 for 2 … but if it wasn't for the bloody umpire we'd still be none down."

Now the ICC - in the guise of its dimwitted alter ego the Idiotic Clots Convention - is embarking on its most muddle-headed misadventure yet. At September's Champions Trophy in Sri Lanka, the onfield umpires will discuss lbw appeals with an off-field colleague watching the game on TV.

The ICC's Dave Richardson, who is fast becoming a walking advertisement for why ex-wicketkeepers are usually kept out of cricket administration, insists the TV umpire will assist only in "certain areas" - where the ball pitched, whether it collected an inside edge. It will all happen in the blink of an eye and do nothing to interrupt the game's momentum.

Complete rot, of course. Anyone who has glimpsed a Channel 9 telecast will know that Tony Greig and Bill Lawry routinely spend 45 minutes feuding about whether a ball did or did not pitch two millimetres outside leg ... and still finish up at odds with each other. Why should it be any easier for the TV umpire?

But the exasperating delays are merely one consideration. There is the question of location. The TV umpire relies on a camera mounted on an imperfect angle 100 yards away. The onfield umpire stands front-on from 22 yards. Better, surely, to believe the superior evidence of his own eyes and, if in doubt, say not out.

Then there is the question of timing. ICC only recently installed its elite panel of international umpires, a sensible reform first advocated in the Wisden Almanack 15 years ago. Why not give them a chance? Why start fixing the system before ascertaining whether it is actually broke?

The biggest worry, however, is the question of where this folly will eventually lead us. During the Champions Trophy the onfield umpires will be permitted to ask TV umpires where the ball pitched, yet prohibited from asking them if it would have hit the stumps. The contradictory silliness of this will quickly become apparent. The calls for TV to have the final say on all lbw appeals will become unstoppable. And Hawk-Eye, the cherished gizmo of Britain's Channel 4, will become God.

Hawk-Eye purports to be able, via missile-tracking technology, to plot a ball's precise flight-path after striking the pad. Apparently it can predict how that flight-path will be altered by any cracks, any footmarks, any breeze that happens to be wafting in. What's more, it can predict whether a ball that hits the seam will jag unexpectedly. Or not. Or by how much. If a ball strikes a batsman's toe on the full, Hawk-Eye would have us believe it can predict where the ball would have ended up.

This is all so much wishful thinking - the pie-in-the-sky guesstimates of a machine that is noble in intention but flawed in method.

That other noble but flawed machine, the MCG's electronic scoreboard, was overshadowed 20 years ago by another supposed technological advance - the commercial break between overs. Hundreds of thousands of Australians had sat mesmerised, glued to their armchairs, as the last-wicket pair Allan Border and Jeff Thomson whittled their unthinkable victory target down from 74 runs to four.

Then Channel 9 threw to an ad break. When they returned ecstatic Englishmen could be seen careering in all directions. Confusion reigned. Then the ghastly truth dawned: the ads had run over. Thommo had edged Ian Botham into the slips, where Chris Tavare had muffed the catch only for Geoff Miller to mop up the rebound. Except you didn't see it. Nobody saw it. It was the most amazing climax in decades and, instead of watching it, you had been made to sit through yet another plug for Aerogard. Or Kit-Kat. Or Bradford Gold Bats. Or whatever it bloody was.

That's the thing about technology in cricket. For every small scrap of good it brings, it has a habit of embracing an infinitely worse evil.

Chris Ryan is a former managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age.

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