File photo of Ben Stokes and Virat Kohli© BCCI/Sportzpics
England captain Ben Stokes once again voiced his frustration at the ‘umpire’s call’ rule in the Decision Review System that continues to haunt his team on the tour of India. Stokes, reflecting on England opener Zak Crawley‘s dismissal in the second innings of the Rajkot Test, suggested how the ‘umpire’s call’ cost the visitors a wicket despite the fact that the ball ‘was clearly missing the stumps’. While former England captain Nasser Hussain agrees with Stokes’ disagreement on the Crawley dismissal, he is not in sync with the idea of the removal of ‘umpire’s call’.
Stokes isn’t the only high-profile cricketer to suggest the removal of the ‘umpire’s call’ from DRS. Even former India captain Virat Kohli suggested the same in the past. But, Hussain once again explained that it’s important to have umpire’s call as it covers the ‘error margin’ in the technology.
“Technology can be fallible but I’ve always been very strong on the fact I like the DRS and I also like the umpire’s call. Look at the shemozzle with VAR in football. It’s just not like that in cricket. Stokes and others like Virat Kohli may want to get rid of it but the umpire’s call is not there to protect the officials it’s there because of the margin of error in the technology,” Nasser Hussain wrote in his Daily Mail column.
When it came to Zak Crawley’s dismissal, even Hussain agreed with Stokes, saying the England batter shouldn’t have been given out as the visuals showed the ball was missing the stumps.
“Bear in mind, also, there have been a couple of changes in the system and the ball can now clip the top of the bails. The LBWs for Ollie Pope and Zak Crawley in the third Test did look high but they have increased the height by 1.3 centimetres. One thing I will agree on with Ben. He said the visual of Crawley’s dismissal showed the ball missing the stumps. If that’s the case you can’t have that,” he added.
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