Kemar Roach is given out caught behind.

He refers it.

The ball is close to the bat.

There doesn’t appear to be any noise.

There is no mark on hot spot.

The original decision stands.

Perhaps it wasn’t obvious enough.

Perhaps I have no idea what the word obvious means.

We miss possibly a pretty cool ending to a test.

I’m going to bed now.

3 in the AM is not the best time to work out the referral system, mind you I haven’t had much luck understanding it during the day either. The umpires seem to give random decisions with it, or without it. And it doesn’t seem to matter which country or continent it is used on, or what teams are involved, the decisions still don’t make sense.

Cricket is a funny game, obviously.

Personally I think if you are going to use the technology, use it, don’t try and prove whether the umpire made a mistake, just give the decision based on the technology.

Last night Mitchell Johnson was given out caught behind. He clearly didn’t believe he hit it.

The replays from straight on showed he clipped his pad, but it didn’t show either way that he hit it.

Hawkeye couldn’t help out. Neither could hotspot. Mitchell didn’t think to play and miss and then show the edge of the bat to the hotspot to make sure he had an alibi. Although innocent people often don’t have alibis.

There was one angle from cover in which it look like there was a gap between bat and ball. That was shown once.

Then there were alot of different angles shown, and one thing you could tell, the noise was after the ball passed the bat.

Snicko was not used, but after 12 replays, it didn’t really need to be, the ball was 5 inches behind the bat when the noise occurred, and that was at the same time Mitchell hit his pad.

To me that was obvious, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t knick it.

The evidence couldn’t prove 100% that he didn’t hit it, and that is what the third umpire’s job was.

Without a referral Mitchell just would have looked disappointed going off, with it, we had a 5 minute wait to work out what had or hadn’t happened.

In the end it was pretty impossible to tell.

Had the incident been sent to the umpire to make an actual decision, Mitchell wouldn’t have been given out, as there was no proof he hit it.

It wasn’t a terrible decision by the umpire. In real time the noise was at roughly the right time, the ball was as close to the bat as it could be, and everything seemed to add up. Other than Mitchell no one would have been that angry at the decision.

To me, the referral system is a half assed way of doing things.

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.

Just as Darren Powell and Fidel Edwards were about to put on a hundred run partnership, Powell was given out caught behind playing a hook shot.

It looked dodgy as hell, and Powell was asking for a referral before the umpire was finished raising his finger.

The video footage showed bat, fresh air, and ball.

He looked about an inch from the ball.

The decision was obviously going to be overturned.

Except, it wasn’t.

Daryl Harper had decided that daylight between bat and ball didn’t constitute an obvious mistake on behalf of an umpire giving a caught behind decision.

Idiot.

Homer has the cricinfo commentary up, Michael Holding seemed do doubt his own eyes, and Bob Willis had some nice words for Daryl.

“He’s got to be given his pension book and [taken] out of there. He is hopeless.”

Anyone can make a mistake on the field, but it takes a special kind of assclown to do so off the field watching a video.