The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : ICC hits back at Steve Bucknor

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Friday, May 12, 2006

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Sport - Cricket

ICC hits back at Steve Bucknor

London: The International Cricket Council on Thursday hit back at Steve Bucknor for claiming that broadcasters misused technology, saying the veteran umpire ``was a very good example'' of why the game needed to rely more on TV footage.

``Umpires are always defensive about their own decisions,'' ICC's general manager Dave Richardson said. ``I often point to him as a very good example of why we need to give technology a go,'' he told BBC Sport.

``He's done particularly well this year. After not a great year last year, he's averaging around 96 per cent of his decisions being correct, and yet he's made one or two decisions which have come in for terrible criticism from the media and from fans writing in to us,'' said Richardson.

Richardson said ICC had chosen the lesser of the two evils — whether to risk compromising the spirit of the game or avoid umpiring controversies.

``It's kind of a lesser of two evils. We don't want to compromise the spirit of cricket and we don't want the players having little respect for the on-field umpires, but on the other we want to avoid umpiring controversies,'' he said. — PTI

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