KARACHI, March 20: Pakistan cricket coach Mudassar Nazar and former coach and team captain Javed Miandad have backed the International Cricket Council’s move to increase the use of technology to aid umpiring decisions.

“Umpires are under a lot of pressure due to the increased intrusion of television in coverage of their decisions,” Mudassar said Wednesday.

“If any technology can be helpful to cricket, it can’t be bad. It must be given a chance to succeed.

I don’t think the traditional role of the umpires is under any threat.”

Cricket’s ruling body has announced an experiment allowing umpires to use television pictures to check any decision in the Champions Trophy tournament in Sri Lanka in September.

It said that if the trial of allowing umpires to refer every decision — including contentious “leg before wicket” (lbw) decisions or “caught behind” — to the television umpire proved successful, it could be carried forward.

“At every Test ground they have giant replay screens on which every contentious decision is replayed again and again. Which brings undue pressure on the umpires. I don’t think there is anything wrong if they use more technology to avoid mistakes,” Mudassar said.

Currently, international umpires can only refer run-outs, stumpings, contentious catches and shots that may not have crossed the boundary to the third umpire, who uses TV pictures to adjudicate.

Miandad, a veteran of 124 Tests, felt that use of more technology would only make the job of the umpires easier.

“There is no harm in trying out a new idea. You don’t know its worth unless you test it out,” he said.

“If use of more technology can help reduce contentious decisions and human errors and curb unnecessary controversies, it should be experimented with,” he said.—Reuters