Eoin Morgan and the England men’s cricket team raised eyebrows with the use of tactical signals from the dressing room balcony during the Twenty20 International series against South Africa earlier this month.
Television coverage during the third match at Newlands in Cape Town on Tuesday captured images of numbers and letters being displayed on placards by video analyst Nathan Leamon.
Morgan said the England team did its research before a game and any signals were intended to show how the data might have changed during the match.
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It was reported that the England camp had cleared their plan to use signals with the match officials before the first match. The ECB has told media outlets that the system that was used in this T20I series was “a live informational resource that the captain may choose to use or ignore as he wishes. They are not commands or instructions and all decision-making takes place on the field.”
However, England’s tactics were met with mixed views from the cricket community.
Indian cricket great Sunil Gavaskar was not in the favour of the placards and questioned whether the International Cricket Council had sanctioned this sort of messaging and the future of it.
“I would like to know if the match referee had confirmed this with the ICC? Did they ask ICC? Has the cricket committee of the ICC sanctioned this, we don’t know this yet. This is happening for the first time,” Gavaskar said on the Star Sports show Cricket Connected.
“We were told that this type of strategy was also used during Pakistan Super League and maybe this was the same person who adapted this technique who was an analyst there. But I don’t believe this should be happening in cricket. The second thing that is worrisome is during the situation of a DRS, would there be a code there as well to help with the decision of taking the DRS?” he added.
Matthew Hayden questioned the effectiveness of it,
“The point about all of this is, how effective is it? I mean from what I understand is, some of these codes were getting mixed up, because there was a run scoring spree during that potential times and that’s the whole point of communications. You come together, you make sure you understand the plan and then you execute the plan, you can’t just leave it as understanding it.” Hayden said on Cricket Connected.
VVS Laxman said that cricket is unlike football, where the manager makes the call and not the captain.
“Often in T20 cricket if the captain needs to make a decision, he discusses it with the coach or the support staff or a senior player, and post that discussion, a captain usually comes to a decision. But if this thing (use of placard) forms a part of the rule, then I believe it is not the right thing, as you want the captain to fulfill his role otherwise you don’t require a captain, and the team can be run from outside similar to football where the manager runs the team,” the Indian said on the show.