DRS – Sri Lanka’s greatest gift to the World of Cricket
Posted on November 5th, 2024
Senaka Weeraratna
DRS is a gift from Sri Lanka to the world of cricket. Its impact is bigger than Sri Lanka winning the world cup in 1996. Why ?
Because this innovation of Sri Lankan lawyer Senaka Weeraratna has completely transformed the game. It is the biggest change in the Rules of the Game since its birth. Today Cricket is more transparent, accurate and fair. Thanks to DRS.
The colossal mistake that Umpire Steve Bucknor made in the Sydney Test 2008 when he gave out Master Batsman Sachin Tendulkar wrongly and changed the course of the direction of the game and its final outcome, is no longer possible. The days of the ‘ Hora’ Umpire ( ‘Hora’ in the Sinhala language means Cheat) are gone.
We must cherish these changes for the betterment of the game of Cricket. DRS has also influenced other major sports including Soccer, which now uses Goal
line technology to determine the accuracy of a Referee’s decision by use of Video Replay technology as in Cricket.
DRS is a huge achievement for Sri Lanka in the field of Cricket. Any other cricket playing country would go to town with it. Broadcast it and highlight it like England did when it honoured the inventor of the World Wide Web (WWW) Sir Tim Berners-Lee at the London Olympics held in 2012.
But not Sri Lanka unfortunately. Always falling short of maintaining ethical standards and allowing Jealousy to heavily influence decision making, Sri Lanka’s Govt. in the past had let down the cricket loving public who have always wanted a clean, transparent, and accountable body to govern Cricket.
Neither the Govt of Sri Lanka nor Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) has so far shown any interest in gaining recognition from the ICC for Sri Lanka for the invention of DRS.
SLC has singularly failed to lobby the rest of the cricket world particularly South Asian countries to support Sri Lanka’s claim for recognition of inventing DRS.
Sri Lanka has much to gain in terms of revenue. The intellectual property of DRS belongs to a Sri Lankan not the ICC.
The ICC is unable to disclose a single name as coming from its stables as the author of DRS.
But it is using DRS without the consent and licence of the Sri Lankan owner Senaka Weeraratna, who has both the economic and moral copyright to DRS.
Neither the ICC nor SLC has paid one red cent to the author of DRS for unauthorized use of this facility.
Millions can be gained from the ICC as revenue for Sri Lanka for use of DRS.
Despite Sri Lanka being a visibly Bankrupt nation always begging other countries for help, yet nobody from Sri Lanka is pushing the ICC to pay Royalties for use of the DRS. ICC had admitted that it has no copyright over DRS.
Both the SLC and the Govt. of Sri Lanka are guilty of betrayal of the country vis a vis the ICC.
We are as a country always short of money. But when money is available on a platter (if we demand from the ICC) on ground of ownership of DRS, we tend to back down or retreat. What cowardice.
In such a context of abandonment of the nation for purely petty reasons, jealousy and spite, one can only hope that the popularly elected new President of Sri Lanka Mr. Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his fresh team would render Justice and support their own countryman to gain recognition for inventing DRS and obtain due compensation from the ICC for illegal use of DRS by the ICC and the SLC without consent of the true owner.