Boycs interview. Good one..

[Holysmoke]

Here are a couple of snippets AR: You've just mentioned the India-Pakistan series and the first question on today's show is related to that. It's from Nikhil and he writes in saying that Rahul Dravid has been dropped from the one-day squad for the first two ODIs against Pakistan following his poor run of scores against Australia. Nikhil feels that Dravid has bailed India out of trouble time and time again in one-day cricket, and he wants to know if you think dropping him was justified. GB: In this instance, yes, I think it probably was. Nikhil is dead right, Dravid has done some wonderful things for India in one-day cricket. But nobody has the automatic right to be selected all the time. What selectors do, or should do, is take into consideration a player's past performance, his standing in the game, and what they know he is capable of, and they've probably done this. But at the same time, he's not in the best of form, and it actually may do him some good if he doesn't play in the one-dayers at all. Why is that? Well, he's been the captain of India, and quite frankly, anybody who has done the job will tell you, it takes a lot out of a player. You have to think of ten other guys in the team as well as yourself all the time and it takes quite a lot out of you mentally. It's quite debilitating. Now that he's not playing the first two one-dayers, I think it will give him a breather. It will give him time to regroup, just to think about his own batting and not that of his team-mates, and get himself ready for the Test matches. And then he'll start playing really well, which I'd expect him to in Test match cricket - he's a brilliant player. I don't necessarily think it is the end of his one-day career, because when he's in great form in Test cricket they will have to consider him for one-day cricket. Quite frankly, once a top player is in really good form, he can play in any form of cricket. AR: Moving on to the question that you've picked as the best one on the show today: it comes in from Sudhi. He wants to know: with so much technology available in cricket now, don't you think there should be a way of being allowed to challenge an umpire's decision - similar to what is allowed in American football - either by the coach or the concerned captain, especially when the error is glaringly obvious? GB: Yes I do. I feel that a lot of the television stations around the world are doing a brilliant job. When they use the Super Slo-mo, you can see quite clearly very often that a batsman has edged it on to his pad and that he shouldn't be given out leg-before-wicket. You can also see many a time that the ball has pitched outside leg stump and therefore the batsman shouldn't be given out leg-before-wicket. You can see sometimes that a player hasn't nicked the ball; it's gone between bat and pad and body and has probably clipped a bit of his clothing and there is a noise and the umpire has given him out, but he hasn't hit it and it's as clear as a bell. You can't have television not showing these things time and again. Television keeps the game alive. All the administrators know that cricket is kept alive by the amount of money paid by television stations. It's not about the crowds coming in, which is a pity - it ought to be but it isn't. So you can't ask them not to show replays of contentious decisions. You might as well embrace technology. I don't think anybody wants to see an embarrassed umpire making mistakes. What we really want as players is more accurate decisions. If you're out, you're out. But if you're not out, you don't want to be given out. It's vice versa with the bowlers: when they've got a wicket early, they don't want the umpire declaring it not out. Two or three challenges will come in the near future. I sit on the MCC World Cricket Committee. Dravid is on it, as are Courtney Walsh, Steve Waugh, Mike Gatting, Mike Brearley, Martin Crowe. There are a lot of great cricketers on it and they say that it [a system of challenges] should be tried out in some form of cricket. It may stop players from standing when they've nicked it. It might bring more sportsmanship in the game. If a player stands when he's nicked it, hoping to get away with it, and the TV replays show that he has nicked it when the decision is challenged, then he's going to end up embarrassing himself. It's a good question and I do see it happening soon. Hawk-Eye is now used in tennis, even in Wimbledon, and challenges will soon come into cricket. Here's the link to the whole thing.... http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/talk/content/multimedia/317814.html?view=transcript

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