Cricket’s Decision Review System was brought in to remove the controversy but after 12 years in the game, it’s receiving fresh criticism.
LBW calls that were hitting the stumps flush but were waved off due to it the decision being deemed umpires calls.
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Marnus Labuschagne had tongues wagging with an LBW call that appeared pretty plumb but the Aussie star sent it upstairs.
It ended up going well over the stumps on ball tracking with Kerry O’Keeffe adding “I think ball-tracker had one too many shirazes yesterday. For mine, that was hitting halfway up middle and leg. What is going on there?” on Fox Cricket commentary.
There were several other instances where the ball was deemed to have been hitting the stumps with Mitchell Starc getting a reprieve despite half the ball knocking off the bail between middle and leg.
The umpire’s call is out of control.Source:FOX SPORTS
It led to Brett Lee savaging the umpires call, saying “look at where it’s hitting, smashing into middle and leg”.
He got plenty of support from Sachin Tendulkar as well with the Indian legend saying in a podcast that he was not convinced by the DRS.
“Why do players go to third umpire — because they are not happy with the on-field umpire’s decision,” he said.
“Once you go upstairs the on-field decision should not come into consideration at all.
“It really does not matter if the ball is hitting 10 per cent or 15 per cent of the wicket. It should not matter because when you get bowled, no one talks about it.
“Since we have decided to go ahead with technology let’s back it. In a period of time we will get closer to 100 per cent. At least in everyone’s mind we are clear if the ball is hitting any part of the stump (it is out).’’
Similar to Starc’s dismissal Joe Burns was lucky to survive and appeal as well.
But LBWs aren’t the only decisions that can be reviewed with run outs and caught behinds also under the microscope after Aussie skipper Tim Paine ended up on both sides of contentious calls.
In the first innings, it looked as though it was run out but the video capabilities appeared insufficient as the most important information came up in between frames and the Aussie skipper was given not out.
Although Indian skipper Ajinkya Rahane was given out for a very similar incident, Paine was not so lucky in the second innings.
Rahane and Paine both at the time the bails were knocked off.Source:FOX SPORTS
Paine went back to a shot and was deemed to have edged it despite no spot on Hotspot and a dull spike on Snicko which appeared to be from his front foot scraping as he shifted to the back foot.
Speaking to reporters after the eight-wicket loss to India, Paine admitted it was “extremely frustrating” for his innings to end in such controversial circumstances.
“It was a crucial part of the game,” Paine said on Tuesday afternoon. “Felt like I’ve been playing pretty well this series, and thought that if I could get in a partnership with (Cameron Green) and add another 120 runs together, the whole game changes.
“To have it finish like that is extremely disappointing, but it is what it is.”
When asked if he had hit the ball, Paine bluntly replied: “No, I think that was pretty clear from my reaction.
“I thought we had a pretty similar example in the first innings with Pujara, which sets a precedence, and then it seemed to change.”
The Snicko that cost Paine in the second innings.Source:Supplied
But speaking to The Age, former International umpire Daryl Harper has taken a swipe at the Aussie skipper for his frustration over the call that went against him.
“You could get 10 Indians in a room and 10 Australians in a room and they would see the Tim Paine run out in the first innings, and the 10 Indians would say ‘oh that’s out’ and the 10 Australians would say ‘oh that’s not out’,” Harper said.
“If there’d been another picture in between the two we were looking at, I think we probably could have ruled him out. So the technology after 12 years of this, it still isn’t up to scratch.
“Perhaps if Tim Paine went down to the under-16s in Hobart and umpired a couple of days of cricket, he might have a greater appreciation of what it’s all about. Personally, I thought (third umpire) Paul Wilson did a mighty job.”
But despite greeting the move to add reviews with trepidation during his career as an umpire, Harper has joined the chorus of calls to remove the umpire’s call.
“I’ve had enough of umpire’s call. Let’s just ban umpire’s call,” he said. “Get rid of the controversy and just go with it. Any contact with ball on stump will dislodge a bail.
“The fact it’s been going for 12 years and the public are still mystified, and the players are still mystified, would suggest that there are some deficiencies in either the communication or the understanding. So there needs to be some serious work done from the ICC’s end because we shouldn’t be talking about umpiring decisions.”
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