With England captain Ben Stokes calling for the ‘umpire’s call’ to be scrapped, a look at what happened with Zak Crawley’s dismissal and the reasoning behind it….
What happened with Crawley?
On the second ball of the ninth over, Jasprit Bumrah pitched a good length delivery on fifth stump, which moved into Zak Crawley, and hit him on knee roll of the front pad. India appealed, umpire Kumar Dharmasena gave out. Crawley, understandably bemused about the height, sent the decision upstairs.
The hawk-eye projections showed that the ball pitched outside off-stump, hit him in line before the verdict on hitting stumps coming as umpire’s call. Such was the projection that it was not clear whether the ball was missing the outer edge of bails on leg stump by a whisker. On-field decision was held and Crawley was given out.
The aftermath
Once the match was over — England suffered a 434-run loss — captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum took the Crawley dismissal to match referee Geoff Crowe to understand what happened regarding the replay. While talking to reporters, Stokes said, “The ball is quite clearly missing the stump on the replay.
So when it gets given umpire’s call and the ball’s not actually hitting the stumps, we were a bit bemused. So we just wanted some clarity from the hawk eye guys. It came back saying the numbers, or whatever it is that is, it was saying that it was hitting the stumps but it was the projection that was wrong. I don’t know what that means. Something’s gone wrong, so, yeah.”
The Umpire’s call conundrum
With Stokes expressing his views that technology cannot always be right after the LBW dismissal of Crawley in the second Test where Kuldeep Yadav trapped him in the pads (it looked not out in real-time while hawk eye showed the ball was hitting leg stump), after what happened in Rajkot put umpire’s call front and centre.
Speaking to Talksport (a UK based sports radio station) after the match, Stokes, while acknowledging that he is not pinning the result to marginal decisions, said: “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.”
What is umpire’s call?
Whether it is the line of pitching, there is no element of umpire’s call. If the centre of the ball is outside the line, it’s pitched outside. For impact or the wickets, when the centre of the ball is outside the designated zone, then the bowling-end umpire’s decision takes precedence. When it comes to hitting the stumps, according to the ICC WTC 2023-25 Playing conditions if the centre of the ball is missing while some part of it is still hitting the ‘Wicket Zone’, then the on-field decision takes precedence.
The Wicket Zone entails a two dimensional area whose boundaries are the outside of the outer stumps, the base of the stumps and the top of the stumps. In Crawley’s case, while there was no issues when it comes to pitching or impact, the question came to whether or not the ball hit the stumps and the hawk eye projection showed umpire’s call — perhaps kissing the outer edge of the bails on leg-stump.
The significance of umpire’s call
As it has been established over the years, what hawk eye technology shows is a projection of an event that did not happen. Which is why, despite the minuscule margin of errors, when it comes to marginal decisions, the human element takes precedence. Sometimes it goes a team’s way and sometimes it doesn’t. According to the data collected by Kishan Bharadwaj S, a data scientist, between January 2017 and January 2021, India have been on the wrong end of 36 umpire’s call decisions.
England (30) are second in the list. When it comes to batters, Virat Kohli had 80 per cent umpire’s call decisions going against him while Stokes had 86 per cent going in his favour. While Stokes did not imply the marginal call as a reason for defeat, it is only natural for him to “feel hurt” when things don’t go England’s way. “You want them to go your way, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't,” he told Talksport.
