zimcricketforums.com

video of the incident

Contrary to what most are saying I think Nigel Llong (3rd umpire) made the right call. For him to be able to overturn the original decision there has to overwhelming evidence and for me this was not the case. The offside hotspot camera vision was obscured and it was not possible to see where the mark on his bat came from. Sure, there was probably a 90% chance he hit it and was out, but the benefit of the doubt, even in this case although be it quite small, must go in favour of the batsman & the original decision. We don't want to get to the stage where reviews are over-used and take away from the flow of play and the spirit of the game. Reviews were brought in to take out the absolute howlers not to bicker over 50/50 calls.

Yeah I agree. This is a huge beat up.

From what I recall, watching it at the time, we never saw any vision of the ball hitting the bat on the hotspot. (I believe later on some extra vision was shown, and we know the hawk-eye was of the wrong delivery - so perhaps the television station has some questions to answer...)

So if he gave it out, he's just guessing that it was the ball that caused the hot spot. Now on balance of probability, yes, it was the ball. But the whole point of DRS was to eradicate the howler, not the marginal call. The on-field umpire didn't think it was out. DRS didn't show conclusively that it was out (although it showed he likely feathered it). Therefore it's not a howler, it shouldn't be overturned.

I think Nigel Llong made the right call.



I'm not against DRS, but again I agree with you that I'm worried it's going to be overused. I'd prefer if DRS is used, that it's just 1 review per side. That way it won't be used on marginal LBW's like it currently is. Batsmen will only use it if a) they hit a ball and are given LBW; b) they are given out caught when they didn't hit it. I'm sick of seeing batsmen deliberate and go for selfish reviews on balls that are cannoning into middle stump. That's defeating the purpose of a review system. I guess fielding teams would still use it tactically, but they'd probably only be inclined to do so if they are very sure that it was a good shout.


This is why it's fun to support Zimbabwe cricket... when Zimbabwe play a Test it's like watching a game from yesteryear. No reviews, no floodlights, definitely no pink balls, run rates from about 1985...

For DRS to be proper, it needs two things:

1) uniformity (BCCI screwing that up, but if the other 9 agree, its not bad. Cricket was always a joke sport anyways)
2) should not lose a review on marginal umpires call decisions (MCC has proposed this)