0A growing number of bad DRS decisions…

So, the intriguing 1^st Ashes Test at Trent Bridge con­tin­ues to be excit­ing with no clear win­ner emer­ging as yet.  How­ever I want to look back to a poten­tially key moment of the game — the “not out” decision giv­en to Aus­trali­a’s Agar.  Let me be clear — no fault can be laid on any of the play­ers or on-field umpires — only on the DRS sys­tem and the umpire man­aging it.  There have been sev­er­al wrong decisions in this Test match and in the recent cham­pi­ons trophy, lets look at each of them in turn.

So, lets list the really poor decisions involving Eng­land so far this sum­mer, and then deal with each in turn

1. Ashton Agar, giv­en not out when stumped (Eng­land vs Aus­tralia, First Test, Day 2)

Agar was stumped by Matt Pri­or.  The on-field umpire called for a 3^rd umpire decision as it was too close to call.  The pic­tures clearly showed the foot was ON the line.  To be giv­en not out the foot must be behind the line.  Whilst bene­fit of the doubt goes to the bats­man, there was no doubt that Agar did not have his foot behind the line.  I find it utterly inex­plic­able that he was giv­en not out — I think the third umpire should explain what he saw and why he decided to give the decision not out.  A video is also avail­able on You­Tube, but sadly neither the video nor the fol­low­ing still image are in HD format.  If you know of an HD source please let us know.

2. Jonath­an Trott, giv­en out LBW after hit­ting the ball (Eng­land vs Aus­tralia, First Test, Day 2)

To be fair to the third umpire, this decision was wrong due to a fail­ure of the DRS sys­tem.  Trott was giv­en not out by the on-field umpire but the decision was ref­ered by the Aus­trali­ans.  The third umpire gave Trott out as there was no hot-spot evid­ence that he had hit the ball.  How­ever, the cru­cial side-on hot-spot cam­era view was not avail­able thanks to Sky using the cam­era to replay a pre­vi­ous ball.  It is fair to say we’ll be writ­ing more about this dis­grace in the near future.  The third umpire should have told the on-field umpire that he had could­n’t see all of the hot-spot pic­tures and the prop­er decision should have been to give the bats­man OR the on-field umpire the bene­fit of the doubt — in either case Trott would have remained not out.  The 2 images below clearly show that the ball has moved to the right before hit­ting the pad, and there is a small mark on snicko­met­er from the impact with the bat in the first image (view it full size to see clearly).

3. Stu­art Broad, giv­en not out caught after edging the ball (Eng­land vs Aus­tralia, First Test, Day 3)

OK, this one isn’t a fault of the third umpire — it was a genu­ine mis­take by the on-field umpire which would doubt­less have been cor­rec­ted by the third umpire had it been reviewed.  It was a very poor on-field decision but the umpire may have been con­fused by an almost imme­di­ate second deflec­tion off the edge of the wick­et keep­ers gloves.  Aus­tralia were unable to review the decision as they had already wasted both of their reviews earli­er in the day.  The Aus­trali­ans need to learn to use reviews prop­erly — the review sys­tem was intro­duced to chal­lenge “howl­ers” like this.  Some pun­dits have also put for­ward the view the Broad should have walked — we’ll dis­cuss that anoth­er time.  A clear video of the incid­ent is avail­able on You­Tube.

4. Ian Bell, giv­en out stumped with his foot behind the line (Eng vs India, Cham­pi­ons Trophy final)

A cru­cial decision which most likely cost Eng­land vic­tory in the Cham­pi­ons Trophy final against India.  Bell was giv­en out when the cam­er­as clearly showed his foot was behind the line and grounded.

We’ll try to find high qual­ity images of each of the decisions so you can judge for yourself