England v Australia, 3rd Test, Old Trafford, 1-5 August, 2013

Winkle Spinner wrote:It's bullshit that the Trott lbw wasn't overturned too tbh, and even moreso Aus lost a review for it. If his leg had momentarily become incorporeal just as the ball passed then leg stump would have gone cartwheeling, 'umpire's call' or no.

I do think there should be some form of DRS. But this series has starkly shown that the way it's implemented does need a serious overhaul.

Umpire's call is b*llocks, and what's worse is that umpire's call has also become pretty much the standard for edges now, too. See Khawaja's dismissal, see both of Pietersen's dismissals. The third umpire is acting outside of his mandate on some decisions, in my opinion. The whole law concerning DRS needs to be re-written. As I said after the last Test, the 3rd umpire should be making the decision as if it was live, not under the proviso that the umpire is right unless he can be 100% proven to be wrong. Umpire's call should either be written out or else it should not be punitive against the team that has appealed such a marginal decision. In exchange for such relaxations of the rules, each team would only be given 1 review.

Agree with that too as the umpires have been proven highly fallible this series, enough to suggest that they can't be trusted for umpire's call. Just use the technology according to the rules.

Suppose at least in KP's case he would have been out on 62 had the ump put his finger up or Clarke bothered reviewing it so he would happily take the ton.

I think everyone's just expecting too much of hotspot - much like they did in the early days of Hawkeye, before players (mostly) got to grips with its limitations.

It clearly works some of the time, and should be treated as such. If you've smashed the cover off the ball and been given out LBW, then review.

If you think you might've got a thin tickle - but need to double check with your partner at the other end - you can't really throw the toys out of the pram if it doesn't show up on hotspot. That's the way it goes with speculative reviews.

Pietersen can feel a bit hard done by to be given out LBW by the same rotten Tony Hill that gave Steve Smith not out off one that was cleaning out all three stumps, but it was just a thin snick he got on the ball. A marginal call. Again it goes back to expectation - I don't think you're being realistic if you think the technology is going to bail you out consistently when the decisions are marginal.

His edge behind today was probably another marginal decision, in that there was no hotspot, no obvious deviation and the bowler didn't appeal for it. But there was a sound, the on field umpire gave it - that's the way it is.

It wasn't a howler - the Khawaja decision was a howler. The Bresnan decision was stiff as. Hotspot or not, the replays for both showed clear acreage between bat and ball. They're the situations the DRS is supposed to remedy. It wasn't the technology that failed in those cases, though: it was a blind third umpire and a cabbage-brained batsman respectively.

One guy wrote in to our paper the other day claiming that he always thought that Blind Freddie was a figure of speech but now he knows that he's a real character who sits in the tv box masquerading as the turd umpire.

Paul Keating wrote:Let me get this straight. Mr K and PCS are at the ground today, together?

No.

I am at the ground today with PCS and Lardy and hoping to catch up jontyh later tonight.

Play about to resume.

And off they go.

Draw.

Lardy wonders if there are any eels on the hovercraft covers.

Apparently you need to be born in the early 60 s to get what that means.

This rain might be a bit steadier......

WideWally wrote:

QED

Henry wrote:This rain might be a bit steadier......

You've just Trevved God. Rain has stopped. Nice one.

Moral victory to Australia but we lose the Ashes if it ends in a damp squib of a draw. Wish this bleak city would make up its mind if its summer or not.

Think the series in our summer might be closer than the likes of Botham think though.  In reality they haven't been that impressive against the much maligned Aussies in two of the tests.

Red wrote:Moral victory.

Oh dear.

taipan wrote:

Red wrote:Moral victory.

Oh dear.

If it was declared a draw now due to the Manchester murk of course it's a moral victory to us. We've been on top all test, have England on the ropes and yesterday were prepared to throw the bat and lost a lot of time due to the absence of summer.

There is no such thing as a moral victory.

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