Gamesmanship Undermining the Purpose of Decision Review System: Evidence from Twenty-20 Cricket

Abstract

Decision Review System (DRS) in cricket is a technology-based officiating aid used by umpires and players. Statistics reveal that bowlers tend to use DRS a higher number of times as compared to batsmen, but with lower success rates. We manifest that the bowling teams in Twenty-20 cricket are using DRS as a gamesmanship strategy to curb the batsmen's potential of scoring runs and not simply to verify umpires' decisions. Using logistic regression, we find that the probability of a bowling-side review being unsuccessful increases by around 0.05 for each percentage increase in runs scored by the batsman. Based upon this, we further investigate the impact on batsmen's game after the review. On applying OLS regression analysis, we find that when batsmen continue to play after a struck down bowling review, their strike-rate reduces by around 25 percentage points compared to the strike-rate after an upheld batting review. Our findings establish that the DRS, which seeks to reduce human error and enhance transparency, engenders newer gamesmanship strategies, and therefore has unintended consequences that undermine its purpose.

Keywords: gamesmanship; technological officiating aid; logistic regression; cricket

JEL Classification: Z2;L83;O14