Zak Crawley played a fine innings of 72 runs which came of 132 balls on Day 4 of the ongoing 2nd Test at Visakhapatnam. His innings was cut short by Kuldeep Yadav but the dismissal has started a Twitter debate. Was Crawly out or not out. Crawley was going well despite wickets falling at the other end and it seemed he will do to India what Pope had done to hosts in the 2nd innings of the 1st Test. But it was not to be as Kuldeep got better of him with a beauty.
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The wicket: all that happened
Kuldeep Yadav bowled a ball to Crawley. Crawley tried to hit the ball off the back foot but missed, and the ball hit his leg. The umpire initially said it wasn’t out, but India asked for a review. The review showed that the ball would have hit the stumps, and Crawley was declared out. This was a crucial wicket just before lunch, as Crawley had been batting well for England, scoring 73 runs.
Review…..successful! ___
Kuldeep Yadav picks up the big wicket of Crawley to keep #TeamIndia in the driving seat ___#BazBowled #IDFCFirstBankTestsSeries #JioCinemaSports#INDvENG pic.twitter.com/c4hMunPVSP
— JioCinema (@JioCinema) February 5, 2024
What’s the debate over the dismissal?
England camp was surprised to see the dismissal. Twitter too started to debate the wicket. It looked not out by naked eyes and umpire Marais Erasmus also adjudged it as same. But th as per the DRS, the ball tracker said that the impact was on the line. However, various screenshots by the fans suggest that ball was already in line and spinning away from the leg stump before hitting the pads.
The screenshots indicate that only 2.5 stumps were visible when the ball made contact with the batsman’s leg. According to standard rules, Hawk-Eye should not be giving a ‘hitting’ result on the stumps in such a scenario; at most, it should have been considered umpire’s call. India seems to have benefited from a fortunate turn of events with this decision.
One fan, who kep a close eye on the game, tweeted: “That looked very off honestly. 3rd stump was almost visible when the ball hit the pads. Very hard to believe that impact was in line, not even in umpire’s call.”
It will be interesting to see what are umpires’ thoughts are at the end of the match. England, looks like, may have been done in by a technological error. Not that India are worrying too much about it, at the moment. England, too, can do very little about it. Technology is never 100 percent but it makes decisions more accurate. However, it too errs at time and cricketers will have to live by this fact.