Rohan Abeygunawardena

The mega cricket conference of ICC will be held in Sri Lanka from July 19th to 22nd, 2024. This is a significant occasion for Sri Lanka whose controlling body Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), was suspended seven months ago on 10 November 2023. The reason given by the ICC was for failing to manage its affairs autonomously and ensure no government interference in the governance, regulation, and administration of cricket in Sri Lanka.

The ICC Board has been monitoring the situation since the suspension and on 28 January lifted the ban. And now ICC has agreed to hold their all-important gathering of cricket administrators and stakeholders from around the globe, in Sri Lanka during July 2024. This is the first time the Annual Conference of ICC will be held in the Asian Region. A feather on the caps of the Minister of Sports Harin Fernando and the President of SLC Shammi Silva.

While we are happy with this untiring effort of the Minister, President and his team on this great progress, as cricket-loving Sri Lankans, please take this opportunity to obtain due recognition for the Sri Lankan inventor of the Decision Review System (DRS) Senaka Weeraratna.

This Sri Lankan lawyer conceived a unique concept called ‘player referral’ as far back as 1997 to minimise on-field umpire errors. His unique suggestion by way of an article was first published in the ‘Australian’ (Australia’s national newspaper) on March 25, 1997. He proposed to combine the appellate function of the legal system and modern technology (i.e. video playback in the hands of the Third Umpire, to determine the accuracy of a decision made by an on-field or ground umpire by way of a Review System.)

ICC formally adopted the concept of Player Referral conceived by Senaka and later introduced it to the cricket world as the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS also called DRS) in 2006.

Until he drew public attention to the benefit of such a player referral system, there was no such system or mechanism in any other sport to review a doubtful decision made by on-field umpires.

However, ICC has not formally recognised Senaka Weeraratna as the inventor of DRS.

As cricket lovers of Sri Lanka, we earnestly appeal to the President of SLC and the Minister of Sports to take up this matter at the ICC Conference, this week.

Rohan Abeygunawardena