In the Test match recently concluded at Trent Bridge – another fantastic game to add to the already great tradition of Ashes cricket, and a game for which both teams are to be congratulated – there was much drama and much for lovers of cricket to talk about. One of the main talking points was the non-dismissal of Stuart Broad in England’s second innings, when he got a thick edge and was caught at slip by Michael Clarke but was given not out and decided to stand his ground. Having already used up their permitted number of referrals under the Decision Review System, the Australians were powerless to seek a ruling from the third umpire, and the mistake was left in place. Broad continued his innings.
Yet, if my own watching, listening and reading impressions are anything to go by, almost the entire cricket commentariat missed the real story. For the vast majority of them the biggest aspect of the episode was that Broad didn’t walk – that is, accept that he was out and go, voluntarily correcting the umpire’s mistake. What!!!? He didn’t walk? OH MY GOD. This is supposed to be a story? Not walking in cricket is a practice so old that if it were a man with a beard, his beard would be full, white and reach from his head way down below his knees and trail along the floor. Why, there was a famous occasion as long ago as 1998, involving Michael Atherton; and, as anyone will tell you about Australians, they have been not-walking practically forever.
True, this was a particularly brazen case, but I don’t see how not walking when you know you’ve put bat or glove to ball can be OK when it’s only a nick but not OK for anything more clear cut than that. Being out caught in cricket is a yes/no sort of thing, rather than a matter of very out or out by only a bit. So Broad’s cheek may be of interest but that he didn’t walk isn’t the essence of what was noteworthy.
Also secondary, in my view, is that Australia had made careless use of the Decision Review System on this occasion by wasting one of their two referrals on a doomed LBW appeal – though they did indeed do that. Had they not, they could have had Broad back in the pavilion before they finally did. But the real problem lies in the maximum limit of two requests for review by the third umpire. The rationale – a perfectly sensible one – is to discourage merely frivolous requests and a never-ending series of these. But the trouble is that errors by umpires, though not all that common, also don’t obey any statistical law of two or fewer per innings. It is quite possible that a team will have used up its two referrals on reasonably sensible appeals, only to find some stinkers coming along later on.
The real story, therefore, as mentioned in passing by Gideon Haigh in today’s Times (£), is this: that ‘[a] system designed to eliminate “howlers” protected one’ here; and this can happen in future again and again. I don’t know what the solution is, but I’m confident one could be found. Maybe it would involve giving the third umpire independent authority to overrule the umpire on the pitch in extreme cases.