 "Nasser Hussain threw his weight behind umpire's call element in DRS after Ben Stokes criticised it. Reuters")
Former England captain Nasser Hussain disagreed with Ben Stokes’ statement calling for the removal of ‘umpire’s call’ from the Decision Review System (DRS). After England’s defeat by a whopping 434 runs in Rajkot against India, the England skipper questioned the necessity of an ‘umpire’s call’ in the DRS. According to Stokes, if the ball is shown to hit or clip the stumps as per ball-tracking technology, regardless of the on-field decision, it should result in the batsman being given out.
As per the stipulated DRS rules, if ball-tracking indicates the ball clipping the stumps, the decision made by the on-field umpire always takes precedence. Hence, if the batter is given out or not out, the third umpire cannot overturn that decision based solely on the ball-tracking evidence.
Speaking with TalkSPORT after the third Test, Stokes highlighted the need for fairness and simplicity in decision-making. He also argued that the decision can be pretty straightforward if the ball was hitting the stumps, hence, the umpire’s call should be dropped completely.
“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," Stokes said after the Rajkot Test. The England captain was particularly aggrieved by Zak Crawley’s lbw decision in the second innings, where visuals suggested the ball could have missed the stumps, but then ball-tracking adjudged it ‘umpire’s call.’
Hussain emphasized that while technology can make mistakes, he supported ‘umpire’s call’ as necessary safeguards. He even drew comparisons with controversies surrounding Video Assistant Referee (VAR) in football.
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More Shorts“Technology can be fallible but I’ve always been very strong on the fact I like the DRS and I also like umpire’s call. Look at the shemozzle with VAR in football. It’s just not like that in cricket. Stokes and others like Virat Kohli may want to get rid of it but umpire’s call is not there to protect the officials it’s there because of the margin of error in the technology," the ex-England cricketer wrote in Daily Mail.
Coming back to on-field developments, chasing a target of 557, England fell short by 434 runs. The Ben Stokes-led side currently trail in the five-match series 1-2. The fourth Test between India and England is scheduled to start from February 23 in Ranchi.