Image Credit- AP
Ben Stokes has demanded that the umpire’s call be
dropped from the Decision Review System (DRS) after England’s defeat in the
third Test match against India in Rajkot left them perplexed by Zak Crawley’s
dismissal in the second innings.
Upon reviewing Kumar Dharamasena’s judgement to dismiss him leg before wicket
to Jasprit Bumrah in the ninth over, Crawley became enraged and left the pitch,
thinking the ball would be missing the top of leg stump based on the estimated
path. This was Crawley’s second marginal DRS call; the first came in his match
against Kuldeep Yadav in Visakhapatnam, where he was called leg before after
Rohit Sharma’s review. At the time, Stokes labelled the choice as
“wrong”.
Following England’s 434-run defeat, the captain of the
team and head coach Brendon McCullum were spotted asking match referee Jeff
Crowe for clarity. Speaking at stumps, Stokes claimed he was informed that the
graphic that was generated, which displayed the ball’s predicted course
narrowly missing the top of the leg stump, was incorrect. Stokes received
confirmation from Hawk-Eye that the calculations were accurate in predicting
sufficient contact with the leg stump to support the on-field verdict.
“We just wanted some clarity around Zak’s DRS
when the images came back,” revealed Stokes. “The ball is quite
clearly missing the stump on the replay. So when it gets given umpire’s call
and the ball’s not actually hitting the stumps, we were a bit bemused. So we
just wanted some clarity from the Hawk-Eye guys.
“It came back saying the numbers, or whatever it is that is, it was saying
that it was hitting the stumps but it was the projection that was wrong. I
don’t know what that means. Something’s gone wrong, so, yeah.
“It’s not me blaming that on what’s happened here, like I didn’t last
week. It’s just… what’s going on?
Ollie Pope’s dismissal in the first innings infuriated
England too. The ruling that Mohammed Siraj was initially “not out”
was reversed because it was determined that the impact on the leg stump was
decisive. The foreign viewers assumed the decision made on the pitch would be
upheld.
Stokes restated his belief that England’s current 2-1 deficit in the five-match
series is not down to such calls. However, he expressed his support for
changing the system, beginning with the umpire’s call.
“We’ve been on the wrong end of three umpire’s
calls this game and that is part of DRS. You’re either on the right side or the
wrong side. Unfortunately, we’ve been on the wrong side. I’m not saying and
never will say that’s the reason why we’ve lost this game, because 500 is a lot
of runs.
“It is not something you pin down to result of the game. Sometimes when
you are on the wrong end of those decisions it hurts but that is part of the
game. You want them to go your way, sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t
“You just want a level playing field. The umpires have an incredibly hard
job as it is, especially in India when the ball is spinning. My personal
opinion is if the ball is hitting the stumps, it is hitting the stumps. They
should take away ‘umpire’s call’ if I’m being perfectly honest. I don’t want to
get too much into it because it sounds like we are moaning and saying that is
why we lost the Test match.”