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.
