England captain Ben Stokes has questioned some of the decisions made against them in the upcoming Test series against India. The England captain was particularly irritated by three of his batters falling victim to an umpire's call in the second innings of the just-finished Rajkot Test.
Zak Crawley was given out LBW in the second innings off Jasprit Bumrah, and replays showed that the ball was barely touching the leg stump after hitting the opener on his pad and going through.
However, Aakash Chopra has questioned Ben Stokes' suggestion while pointing out that the system was introduced just to stop howlers.
"Ben Stokes has said that he does not liking DRS. He asked the umpire's call to be removed. DRS is not foolproof. So, you go towards the umpire's call as you are not 100% certain. You say that is what was the umpire's job, so you remain out if the umpire gave it out and not out if he gave not-out. That was the truth. It is not a howler. What you are trying to remove is already removed by default," Chopra said on his YouTube channel.
Chopra added that the umpire's call is evaluated for impact on the pads since the DRS technology may not be accurate when there are two moving objects. He further stated that because the ball-tracking device projected the impact on the stumps, the umpire's call takes precedence.
In addition to this, Chopra acknowledged that a few decisions, including Zak Crawley's dismissal off Kuldeep Yadav's bowling in the second innings in Visakhapatnam, looked slightly dicey to the naked eye.
"I will be very honest, there were two or three decisions that you felt were 50-50 when you saw them with the naked eye. One was when Zak Crawley got out off Kuldeep Yadav's bowling in Vizag. With the naked eye, it didn't seem like it would hit the middle of the leg stump,” he said.
He also said that Ollie Pope getting out in the first-innings of Rajkot Test left him surprised.
"It seemed like at best it would be the umpire's call but it wasn't the case. That's the problem with the naked eye. After that, when Ollie Pope got out to Mohammed Siraj's ball, there also I felt that at best it could be the umpire's call but it hit the three stumps. That was also very surprising," Chopra stated.
Chopra pointed out that the decision wouldn't have been overturned even if the umpire's call wasn't considered when talking about Crawley’s LBW dismissal off Bumrah in Rajkot.
"Then when Zak Crawley got out in the second innings, the umpire had given out, and it was the umpire's call only. Stokes said they don't want umpire's call. By the way, what is the meaning of umpire's call?
The umpire had given it out and you took the DRS. If you don't agree with umpire's call, the umpire had given you out in any case, so you wouldn't have gained anything. So I have got no idea what exactly he is trying to suggest," he added.
Chopra noted that all three slightly questionable decisions wouldn't have gone England's way had the umpire's call not been in place.
