India have 2-1 lead in test series

They should take away 'umpire's call': Ben Stokes

Ball can now clip the top of the bails: Nasser

With India having a 2-1 lead against England in the 5-match test series, the Decision Review System (DRS) has once again become the focal point of discussion. This is following discontentment in the England camp following a dismissal of Zak Crawley wherein a ball projected to miss the stumps was ruled out on account of umpire’s call.  “You just want a level playing field. The umpires have an incredibly hard job as it is, especially in India when the ball is spinning. My personal opinion is if the ball is hitting the stumps, it is hitting the stumps. They should take away ‘umpire’s call’ if I’m being perfectly honest. I don’t want to get too much into it because it sounds like we are moaning and saying that is why we lost the Test match,” captain Ben Stokes said speaking to TalkSPORT after the Rajkot test. 

Former England captain Nasser Husain has however opined in favour of the DRS 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. 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.  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 stated in a Daily Mail blog.