DRS should have been trialled first in ODIs, T20s: Ponting

Melbourne:

Australian captain Ricky Ponting feels the controversial Decision Review System should have been trialled in one-day and Twenty20 cricket before being introduced in Tests as the innovation still needs some "refinement".

"Ideally, a lot of those things with rule changes, we've brought into 50-over cricket over the last couple of years. Ideally you'd like to have trialled them elsewhere," Ponting was quoted as saying by 'The Sydney Morning Herald'.

"In the last 12 months, the review system was used that was more a trial period. We know that it's going to be used in every Test series from now on. I still think there's some refinement that can be done with the actual technology that's used," he said.

DRS, which allows teams to challenge umpiring decisions in close dismissals, is being used in the ongoing Test series between Australia and the West Indies. There was controversy in the second Test in Brisbane due to the system when one of the decisions by umpire Mark Benson was overturned despite lack of video evidence.

Ponting said DRS is meant to clear all doubts and should be 100 per cent accurate to justify its introduction.

"That is the big thing - if you're going to go into something like this, you've got to go in 100 per cent and use whatever you can that you can use to make the system its absolute best," he said.

"We're all still coming to terms with it. The more we play with it and experience it, I guess the more we'll appreciate it," Ponting added.

His West Indies counterpart Chris Gayle, to whom the system hardly makes any sense, reiterated that DRS remains a "complicated" issue for him.

Ponting, however, remained supportive of the innovation but felt the umpires' feedback should be taken every now and then to ensure that they don't feel undermined.

"I'm still supportive of it, because at the end of the day, when we all learn a bit more about it and understand it a bit more, I think it will still have a good impact on the game," he said.

"The thing I want to do is chat to the umpires and get their views and opinions on the whole system as well. I think that's the important thing and sometimes important people can be overlooked in some of these rule-changing decisions that are brought in," he added.

"I want to see how they are going with it all. It's one thing for the players to accept these sort of changes and technologies, but it's another thing for the umpires as well.

I want to get the overall feeling from them as to how it's going."