KEY POINTS:
Technology seems to me to be a little like the Rosa Parks of sport. She was the woman whose arrest for not giving up her seat on a bus to a white person galvanised Martin Luther King and the US civil rights movement.
She could ride on the bus but only under certain conditions. Sport has grudgingly permitted technology - but only under certain conditions.
During the recent Australian Open tennis, it was ludicrous watching players allowed to use the Hawkeye technology on some occasions but not others. Hawkeye electronically tracks the flight of a ball and permits players, spectators and umpires to see whether a ball is in or out.
The rules allow players to challenge a line umpire's call. If they are right, the point is awarded to them and they can challenge again. Challenge unsuccessfully twice in a set, however, and that's it. You can't challenge if you've had two wrong challenges already.
This was highlighted when Serena Williams saw a vital ball from semifinal opponent Nicole Vaidisova was out. But she couldn't call it - she'd had her two challenges.
Serena won anyway but the point remains - why have technology and not use it? The ball is either in or out.
Why take advantage of technology some times but not others?
It's plain daft, even when you factor in the fear that too many challenges will disrupt the game if left to the discretion of players. Even if that was true, so what? Each challenge takes a few seconds, so good is the technology.
Do we want a quick game or do we want the right result?
All that needs to be done is to empower the umpires with the ability to bar a player's challenges for the rest of the match if the umpire feels the player is taking the mickey. A warning - and then that's it. It never ceases to amaze me that sports are so ready to let their officials look like fools rather than help them to make the right decision.
Don't we all want to see a match that is won fair and square rather than from a bum call?
Don't give me that tired old business about such mistakes causing drama. Human error doesn't cut it as sporting drama, not when it's an official's booboo. Give me the drama of a winning goal or a crosscourt backhand or a sweetly hit six any day. What would you rather see - that or a team of footballers surrounding the referee, squawking protests like angry parrots?
But some sports - like cricket and football - still cling to the outmoded and scarcely believable view that it is preferable to have human error rather than technological intervention.
Yet, in the Black Caps' match against England in Perth last week, there was final, absolute proof that technology has a far greater role to play and does not rule human error out of the game.
When Ross Taylor was batting, he played forward to a ball and missed. England wicketkeeper Peter Nixon had the bails off in a trice. They appealed.
Not out, said the umpire. And that was that. Except for the slo-mo replay. Taylor's foot had lifted at the crucial milli-second when Nixon took the bails off. It was one of the great one-day stumpings; a thing of pure reflex, speed and dexterity. It was out.
Except it wasn't - because the umpire declined to take the matter to the video ref as, unable to capture the speed of the event with the naked eye, he believed it was clear-cut. Chance gone - human error.
Lou Vincent was also given out lbw in an earlier match by an umpire who so clearly got it wrong that replays showed the ball coming off Vincent's glove, not his pads.
There is no disgrace in being wrong - it happens to all of us all the time. So why not allow technology to be used for lbws as well as for run-outs, stumpings and catches at the wicket? Allow the fielding side to use it and allow the batting side to challenge an lbw or caught behind decision. It can all be sorted out quickly and easily.
In the Perth match, Vincent was struck on the pad. The Australians appealed. Hawkeye showed that the ball would have hit the stumps. "Oh, you can't give that out," said Bill Lawry in the commentary box, referring to the fact that the batsman was playing forward.
Why can't you? It was out, wasn't it? Once again, you either use technology or you don't.
Football is the worst culprit. It does not allow technology to sort out whether the ball has crossed the goal line. Or whether players are offside; or if they have conceded a penalty or dived to get one.
Fifa chief Sepp Blatter says the game will use technology for goal-mouth action but will not stop the game for video technology.
No, of course not. Not when you could help stamp out match-fixing, cheating, arrant disregard for referees and set a good example for the millions of kids watching.
No, that would be far too sensible.
