England captain Ben Stokes called for a huge change in umpiring decisions vis DRS and said that the umpire’s call should be taken away. His words came after England’s 434-run loss to India in the third Test of the five-match series in Rajkot.
Stokes was peeved with a couple of LBW decisions going against England's side via umpire’s call rulings. The major talking point was the dismissal of opener Zak Crawley. Crawley was trapped in front of the stumps by Jasprit Bumrah and was given out by the on-field umpire.
But Crawley opted for the DRS, with the technology appearing to show the ball was missing the stumps. The DRS gave it as an ‘umpire’s call’, despite seemingly missing. Stokes was seen talking to the match referee after the match.
“It was just about Zak’s DRS and he was just giving us some information about how it was judged to be given out when the ball wasn’t hitting the stump on the replay. The numbers said it was hitting the stump, but the image said it was wrong,” Stokes told talkSPORT.
Stokes wants to see the ‘umpire’s call’ rules for DRS gone but also refused to blame them for England's defeat.
He continued: “I think you just want some kind of level playing field, I guess. I think the umpires have an incredibly hard job as it is, especially out in India when the ball's spinning and bouncing, and sometimes not. My personal opinion is that if the ball's hitting the stumps, the ball's hitting the stumps. I think that should take away the umpire's call if I'm being perfectly honest.
I don't want to get too much into it because then it sounds like we're moaning about that.”
England collapsed to their heaviest Test defeat in terms of runs since the Second World War to go 2-1 down in the five-match series. Set 557 runs to win the Test and go up in the series, England was bundled out for 122 and lost by 434 runs.
Ravindra Jadeja picked five wickets to go with his two wickets and 112 in the first innings and was named the Player of the Match. Yashasvi Jaiswal hammered his second consecutive double ton, while Rohit Sharma made 131 in the first innings. Debutant Sarfaraz Khan made 62 and 68* in his first outing in Tests and Shubman Gill made 91 in the second do.
Stokes added: “It's just about us accepting that we're going to have bad days, regardless of how you choose to play. We've got a style of cricket that we know suits us as individuals and as a team and it doesn't always pay off and we're realistic to that.
But we know if we keep going out with the best intentions, push the game forward like we want to, when a couple of guys have their day out, we're a very hard team to play against."
(talkSPORT inputs)
