The referral system is a flawed concept.
It doesn’t stop mistakes being made.
The players don’t like it, Sarwan bagged the system after it saved him.
When used by an umpire of limited skill it still makes mistakes, yes you Daryl.
And it doesn’t use enough of the technology.
It simply does not work effectively to be used.
It is the equivalent of throwing monkeys at an incoming tsunami.
Today i saw it’s three main problems.
Referral 1 the lack of other technology
Mark Boucher comes to the crease after a wicket. gets beaten by a peach of a jaffa of a top nut. Australia think he has edged it, they all go up. He is given out, and before the finger reaches the sky he is doing that grotesque bastketball signal. The third umpire sees the foot, legal delivery. He then sees 2 or three angles of the Boucher dismissal. One shows that he may not have hit it, the others show that it is too close to call. None of them showing him edging it. The umpire then has to make his decision, without a visable gap betwwen bat and ball he cannot overturn the decision. So he doesn’t.
Solution: snicko and hotspot are two technologies that could have helped the umpire here. If they couldn’t resolve it, then Boucher could still have been given out. A batsman does not know if he has missed a ball by a millimetre or sandwich width. He just knows he hasn’t hit it, and refers it.
Referral 2 judgement calls
Andrew McDonald is trying to make his way in international cricket. He hits AB on the pad, dead in front, plumb as you’d like, not out. Australia refer it, incorrectly. Because there is nothing the umpire can do in this situation, he cannot say 100% that the ball is going on hit the stumps, who can. The umpire has no grounds to change the decision.
Solution: Why can’t the umpire say to the 3rd umpire, based on what you can see, would you give it out. It really isnt that hard, he has the slowmo, he has the non predictive hawkeye, he has a few angles.
Referral 3 the umpire isn’t allowed to umpire
Shiv leaves a ball from Anderson, it strikes him on the top of the pad flap. It is given. He refers it. On the replay the hawkeye stops as the ball hits him, it is already at bail height, with half the ball above and half below. After a short while Daryl Harper decides it cannot be overturned.
Solution: Had Harper been asked to make a decision of whether the ball was going to hit the stumps, he probably would have said no. Instead he was asked if the umpire had made an obvious error. The ball was right on the line of the bails when it hit him. It was not an obvious error, even though if it was an obvious error. Harper’s decision was that this was not obvious as the ball had yet not cleared the bails, to anyone who understands cricket, obviously this excludes Daryl Harper, it was obviously a mistake and should have been over ruled.
This all happened on one day.
All three errors allowed to occur because of a flawed system.
Although Daryl Harper could ruin a perfect system as well.
The system doesn’t work, and these three cases are not even the most perfet examples. I am sure there are more out there that show the inadequiecies of this system.
Daryl Harper has been the biggest problem the referrals has, but S Sport in South Africa made a play for that crown today, when due to technical hitches or some such shit, they couldn’t even show the 3rd umpire the replay.
I was just about to post this, and Harper made another monumental cockfuckup.
The exact same sort of decision which was not over turned for Andrew McDonald, was referred by England, by the letter of the law it could not be overturne, Harper over turned it. When the predictive hawkeye was shown, the ball was going over the top.
Harper basically made two mistakes, but spectaculary, two mistakes that contradicted each other.
Is there any end to his talent.
Stanford’s enduring gift to cricket should be the referral system at his much-loved tournament. Let the umpires refer when they want guidance, and leave the players out of it. Why are players being asked to umpire anyway?
And we’re not even done today. Good thing Holding was in the box when the puke fest was on, he brought dignity where none existed.
i just dont understand why they dont use snicko and hot spots. hotspot is basically the best new technology thts come out ,
D, There are only 3 hotspot cameras in the world, and they cost a fortune.
What do you mean by a fortune Jrod?
A week of KP’s wages?
Maybe even two weeks….
The referral system is not there to stop errors being made. It is there to correct glaring errors. You know? Like Chanderpaul’s
There’s nothing wrong with the system per se it is who you have in charge of operating it.
The elephant in the room is that every single one of these umpires are poor (Taufel included) and some of them are worst as they are biased depending on who is playing.
Keep blaming the “referral system”
Nico, One of my examples was just about the umpires, but its the way they implement a flawed system. Had Harper been asked if he thought the Chanderpaul decision was out, he might have said no, instead he was asked if there was a mistake made, he decided there wasn’t.
Why ask an umpire if a mistake is made, why not just ask them to make a decision? That is what umpires do for a living, and with the extra help they should get more decisions correct.
This is a half assed system that the umpires are not using correctly, and that the players don’t seem to understand.
can’t say i’m a fan of technology
having perfect decisions is like having flat pitches. it’s boring
sometimes you get a bad bounce. it’s all part of the challenge
you can tell a bad player by how much they complain at decisions, because the good batsmen know they’re going to score a hundred next time anyway, and the good bowlers know they’ll get another chance next over
lara, gilchrist, tendulkar… all walkers, always accept the umpire’s decision
jp duminy walked during this test. good sign
but the real problem is that people expect technology to be perfect. it isn’t
and it won’t make things easier. it creates doubt when none existed
like super slo-mo. it makes the simplest things look dodgy as hell, because it picks up detail we ignore in real time
and hot-spot and snicko have troubles detecting really faint edges, because the images aren’t perfectly clear
the point is, years ago we’d just give it out or not out and move on. now we have to examine everything to such fine detail, that it no longer makes sense
better technology won’t make people complain less. but it will make obvious decisions look complicated, and complicated decisions look obvious
which is all part of the fun
Tendulkar does not walk
23.4 Muralitharan to Tendulkar, OUT, Review. Flat doosra down the leg side, Tendulkar goes for the paddle sweep and the ball pops up on the leg side, leg slip dives across and takes it cleanly. Doctrove is not impressed and Jayawardene calls for the review. Replays confirms that the ball took the shoulder of the bat after clipping the pad.
SR Tendulkar c Dilshan b Muralitharan 12 (42m 30b 1×4 0×6) SR: 40.00
Harper reckons he got dodgy pictures in the first test, as well.
If you look at it another way, he was self-consistent, not contradictory. But then it’s hard to understand what he was thinking.
They’ll have hotspot trialled for the second test. It wasn’t quite ready for the first test i heard!!
It’s an excellent point you make that the problem isn’t technology, but limiting the technology.
Jrod,
Whats your opinion on McDonalds selection at 8?
Last time they picked him at 6 and i think you said Australia have decided 4 bowlers isn’t enough. Now they pick him at 8 so are they saying 6 batsmen is not enough?
For me it reaks of typical Ponting negativity (just like the decision to keep batting at after lunch today).
You’ve seen more of McDonald (to me he looks like a decent cricketer but not quite capital Test standard) then any of us so what role should he play for Australia in the future?
Nick, He shouldn’t be in this team, it was a mistake to select him in Sydney as a number 6, and a mistake to pick him here. He does have alot of talent, but I think he would need 10 or 15 tests to settle himself, and I don’t think he has enough talent to justify that sort of apprenticeship. His role for Australia should be as a drinks waiter at Durban and Cape Town, and then he should be sent back to Victoria for ever.
referral system strictly blows. the on-field umpires should be in control with the 3rd umpire as the veto. 3rd umpire will have the power to reverse any on-field decision. the only tech to be used should be hotspot. problem solved.
also the only reason carrot top got a game was that dropping him would have made the selectors look like the fuckwits they really are when they picked him for sydney. north by northwest has sealed that spot and macdonald will be given a soldier’s death before the tour is over. if geriatric bryce didn’t have the shits, maybe it would have happened this game.
@nick – ponting continuing to bat after lunch today was the first sign of problem? what about not enforcing the follow-on? or accepting the bad light on day 3 when there was still 90 mins left in the day’s play? and all of this when everyone knows weather could play a role? its idiocy like that when australian are on top and pushing for a win that makes us want punter’s resignation.
Sunny,
I actually agree with Ponting on the two examples you have given.
1) The light was absolutely terrible when they took it. I dont know if your’e watching the game or getting crickinfo highlights but Ponting had played and missed a few times just prior to taking it. Light was really bad, at the point were injury could be risked.
2) Australian teams generally don’t like following on after the little debacle in India a few years ago. Also i think Pontings negativity in team selection played into the follow on decision. He only has 3 frontline bowlers so they need a break between innings.
I’m not one to stick up for Ponting’s caqtaincy. I tend to agree with our host Jrod, the guys a moron. But i think he got those decisions correct.
Captaincy wise i think he’s the best man for the job at the moment. However i think his captaincy is way to negative.
Nick & Sunny, My problem with them going off with the light is that the over before Hughes smashed two 4s.
The not following on is whoevers fault it is they picked 3 bowlers.
And the best man for the job in my eyes the man standing next to Ponting.
North?
Nick, yes, it wont happen, but he is a better man for the job.
I don’t care if they use technology or not – I just want them to get it right as often as possible.
Mr Panic, I really think the notion that after a shit decision ‘we would move on’ is nonsense. People still moan on about how McDermott never hit that ball off Walsh to lose the Adelaide Test by one run. Christ, people still rabbit on about whether Bradman was out or hit a bump ball in a tour match against England in 1946, and there’s no-one even still alive that saw it! And I play with blokes who hate some of the opposition teams for being cheating cunts, who would dump their best mate just for watching them cunts play, because of some dodgy decision one of their bloke’s made back in the 1980′s. No-one moves on, its not human nature.
Re Andrew McDonald, I don’t mind the selection and I can see why he was picked. Because he is a worker – the Aussie team of late became bloated with egos and it lead to self-destruction. McDonald is never going to be a loud-mouth smart arse. He knows he’s not that good. He knows the only way he is going to get along is to put his head down, focus and do the job. I think the selectors might see that as having tremedous value to this current Aussie cricket side.