For the first time in an ICC men's T20I tournament the Decision Review System (DRS) will be in use as the governing body has announced that the system will be available at the T20 World Cup starting later this month.
As per the playing conditions released by the ICC this week for the forthcoming T20 World Cup, which begins on October 17 and will be played in the UAE and Oman, each team will get a maximum of two reviews per innings. The governing body had confirmed in June last year an additional unsuccessful DRS review for each team in each innings of a match across all formats, "keeping in mind that there may be less experienced umpires on duty at times" owing to Covid-19-related reasons. The number of unsuccessful appeals per innings for each team has since increased to two for the white-ball formats and three for Tests.
The ICC has also decided to increase the minimum number of overs for delayed and rain-interrupted matches. During the group stages of the T20 World Cup, each team will need to bat for a minimum of five overs for the result to be decided by the DLS method. That's the norm for any T20I currently. But for the semi-finals and the final, each team will need to bat for a minimum of 10 overs to effect a result, as was the norm in the women's T20 World Cup last year, where it became a major talking point after the first semi-final, between England and India, was washed out in Sydney, and the absence of a reserve day saw England eliminated.
A marquee tournament such as the men's T20 World Cup did not utilise the DRS in the past because the last edition of the event took place in 2016 when the review system was not in place in T20Is. The first ICC T20I tournament to have the DRS was the 2018 women's T20 World Cup in the Caribbean where teams had one review available. The same was used again at the 2020 edition of women's T20 World Cup in Australia, the last multi-team event organised by the ICC before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Introduced to minimise the margin of error in decision-making by umpires, the DRS, a process under which the third umpire may be consulted in relation to a decision of the on-field umpires, either by way of an umpire review or a player review, has been used since 2017 in major ICC events such as the men's Champions Trophy, the 50-over World Cup, and the World Test Championship as well as the women's ODI and T20 World Cups.
Under the ICC's playing conditions, the use of DRS in both men's and women's internationals is at the discretion of the participating boards for bilateral series.