21 July 2010

This morning's LBWs

Interesting watching the ball moving all over the place this morning as Pakistan bowl at the Australians - currently it's 50-5. There's been some good non-LBWs given such as Ponting's first ball that was going just over middle stump, but also one against Michael Clarke that looked out - and was according to Hawkeye - but wasn't given. Of the given LBWs, seen as live on TV the Katich one looked like one that the batsman would consider himself unlucky - I imagine the umpire would have loved to see a replay....Hawkeye showed it was hitting the outside of leg stump so in theory a good decision. I instinctively was thinking not out.

The Hussey one was sadly a wrong decision and as the finger went up I was saying (as a neutral) "no Rudi, no Rudi!" as it looked very leg-side and so it proved, missing leg stump according to Hawkeye. I would hate to be an umpire in these type of conditions as the ball's moving all over the shop - in effect when the ball is moving around so much the umpire is making decisions from extra cover or midwicket as the ball is moving at near on 45 degrees to the stumps by the time it hits the pad.

There's no way that human umpires could get all decisions right in such conditions. That's why technology would help....

3 comments:

Pete V said...

and there was no need for a technology on the Johnson wicket. That was lovely to watch.

Jez said...

Remind me again - have we abandoned the review system? I thought they had it working pretty well the last few test matches i saw with it in place ala the 2 or 3 referrals. Definitely helped.

Ed said...

It's sorted out on a series by series basis and as I understand it both teams need to agree they want it and then negotiations need to be done with the broadcasters. So in practice it's not being used much it seems.