Legendary commentator Ian Bishop has given a hard-hitting reply to England captain Ben Stokes’ suggestion of scraping the Umpire’s Call from the DRS.
The England camp have been upset with the umpire’s call in the Hawkeye technology in the ongoing series against India. Their frustrations rose after Zak Crawley’s lbw dismissal in the second innings in Rajkot, where the ball was projected to be clipping the leg bail and the umpire’s on-field call of out was withheld.
Crawley fumed at umpire Kumar Dharmasena while Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum later spoke with match referee Jeff Crowe following England’s heavy 434-run defeat.
While Stokes admitted that the three umpire’s call lbw decisions against them are not the reason for them being 2-1 down, the England captain did emphasize his feelings regarding the technology.
Ben Stokes said in Rajkot, “You just want a level playing field. 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.”
Ian Bishop gives a strongly-worded reply to Ben Stokes’ suggestion of scrapping umpire’s call
Veteran commentator and former West Indies pacer Ian Bishop took to Twitter to give his take on Ben Stokes’ suggestion of doing away with the umpire’s call.
Bishop called out the “righteous indignation” that some batters have shown when given LBW out on the field, and asked the batters to get used to living with the technology.
Ian Bishop tweeted, “The number of batters that carry on with a sense of righteous indignation whenever they are given out LBW & ball tracking shows the ball to be only clipping the stumps!! But we want to remove umpires call; OK then Batters will have to live with the consequences. Let’s go”
The number of batters that carry on with a sense of righteous indignation whenever they are given out LBW & ball tracking shows the ball to be only clipping the stumps!! But we want to remove umpires call; OK then🤷🏽♂️ Batters will have to live with the consequences. Let’s go👀.
— Ian Raphael Bishop (@irbishi) February 19, 2024
Earlier, after the second Test in Vizag, too, Stokes had called out the umpire’s call and Hawkeye, which now has attracted a response from Paul Hawkins, the creator of Hawk-Eye’s ball-tracking technology.
Hawkins said, “There isn’t [even] a one percent chance of it being wrong,” Hawkins told the Sunday Times. “For every DRS [incident], we do screen-grabs which show everything the [Hawk-Eye] operator shows. This is automatic, we can’t manipulate it, and that immediately goes to the ICC [the game’s governing body] as part of the quality control process. There are also two independent tracking systems… both trajectories give the same result, and are hitting the stumps in the same place.”
