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There can be few judgments in the history of the DRS that have been so clearly wrong as Nigel Llong’s decision during the Adelaide Test to ignore a distinct hot spot (in the shape of a small, white feather) on Nathan Lyon’s bat and give him not out.
The decision came after five minutes of endless replays, and with the batsman having virtually given himself out by making his way closer to the gate than the pitch.
The replays showed the hot spot feather each time it was reviewed. Yet again and again the replays were shown, as if Llong were hoping to wear out the spot.
Perhaps he expected that if it were brought on to the screen enough times it would somehow, miraculously, disappear from view.
New Zealand were well on top of Australia when the Llong blunder was made, and looking at the possibility of a substantial first-innings lead. By the time Lyon was finally dismissed, he had scored 34 runs and been involved in a ninth-wicket partnership that took Australia into the lead.
This lead was further increased with some hitting at the death by the injured Mitchell Starc.
There is no doubt that the Llong blunder materially affected the outcome of a Test where a pink ball was used for the first time, and where the ball dominated the bat so intrinsically that no batsman on either side scored a century on a pitch and oval ground that is generally regarded as a batting paradise.
What was almost as disappointing as the Llong blunder was the see-no-evil response of the ICC chief executive Dave Richardson. “I was watching it on television,” The Daily Telegraph reported him as saying, “and I think the process was okay.”
Oh dear! A process that results in a spectacular blunder is somehow okay?
What bureaucratic madness is this? The Australian pointed out that this support of the process, the endless cycle of video reviews, managed somehow to play the wrong replay when the LBW possibilities were supposed to have been looked at.
The whole point about the DRS is to ensure that Llong blunders never, repeat never, happen. When a supposed fail-safe system like the DRS actually fails then something has to be done about it to restore some credibility back to the system.
The DRS actually worked. It revealed the feather touch of ball on bat. But Nigel Llong failed. The logical response to this failure is to stand him down from further duties and require him to be retrained and re-educated and then possibly unleash him again in the DRS, but never again with Test cricket.
Instead, we get the old mates act as Richardson supports Llong, and to hell with the consequences of the decision to New Zealand’s high hopes of squaring the Test series with Australia, something that would be the equivalent of the Wallabies winning back the Bledisloe Cup.
There will be some who will argue that my attack on Llong contrasts strongly with my defence of Craig Joubert’s fateful decision in favour of Australia and against Scotland in the last few minutes of the 2015 Rugby World Cup quarter-final.
There is, though, in defence of Joubert (and myself) several significant differences between the two incidents.
Joubert, under the laws of rugby, could not refer the disputed decision to the TMO. Even if he had had the right to go “upstairs” there is the distinct possibility that the TMO would have backed his decision. The World Rugby criticism of Joubert was pushed by irate Scotland officials and supporters.
The Joubert decision was found to be incorrect after what World Rugby noted were many, many replays.
In my view – and many officials and rugby people agree with this opinion – Joubert was right on the facts and the law.
Whatever, the Llong blunder involved an entirely different set of circumstances. Llong had the appropriate evidence that supported an out decision and he disregarded that evidence.
I know within the wide world of cricket there has been an intense debate about whether Lyon should have walked and, thereby, encouraged Llong to make the correct decision to give him out.
Cricket purists have the view that batsmen should walk when they have feathered the ball and there is some doubt in the mind of the umpire.
I can understand that point of view but, on reflection over decades of thinking about cricket and noting the new technologies available to ensure that the decisions made by umpire are correct one I have become an advocate of not walking.
I know from my playing days that one of the reasons, occasionally, why a batsman makes a mistake and feathers a catch is that he has been completely fooled by the delivery and actually does not know what has happened.
I was a walker, like most of my contemporaries decades and decades ago. I remember walking once when I didn’t have a clue to what had happened. To my embarrassment, I was recalled by the opposing captain on the grounds that the nick I thought was a touch of bat on ball had not actually happened.
In the case of Nathan Lyon, it is pretty clear that he knew he had feathered the ball. This knowledge, too, would have been reinforced as he watched the DRS replays. This is why he gave himself up and made his way to the pavilion, I would think.
When he was given not out, he had no option but to continue batting. In my day (again we are talking decades and decades ago in the 1960s) it was not unusual in these circumstances for a batsman to throw his wicket away.
But I do not think this is an appropriate response in this era. The game at its highest levels is a commercial entity, with the players being an important part of the marketing and selling of the game to the huge viewing audiences around the world.
The Corinthian ethics of the good old days no longer apply in this modern cut-throat, market-driven, competitive world of international sport.
I think, too, that the DRS technology has actually changed the nature of being “out” as a batsman.
When the umpire was the final and single arbiter of a decision like the Llong blunder all the players, the batsman and the bowlers, had a certain responsibility to the umpire to help him make the right decision. This meant that appeals had to valid and tempered.
If you watch old film, say of Richie Benaud bowling at Manchester when he skittled England, you will see vigorous appealing but nothing like the carry on that you get now with the staring at the umpire the dervish-like running around before a decision is made.
The DRS technology has replaced the players as “helpers” of the umpire. The players are out of the equation as far as any delivery of the outcome is concerned. They can appeal and carry-on, as they do, but the umpire the DRS technology decide the matter.
This change in the technology of umpiring, from just the eye-sight and instinct of the umpire aided by the fair play of the batsman, has superseded everything. The DRS makes the final decision. And that is the end of the matter.
In my opinion, this relieves the batsman and the fielding side from any sense of responsibility or guilt about the outcome.
So batsmen should not walk and fielding sides are entitled to appeal for everything and anything in the hope that something might just turn up.
Ultimately, a batsman is out when the technology says he is out and not when he says he is out.
We should forget, too, that the “out” decision-making is further compromised by the DRS technology by the fact that occasions where a batsman is actually out can be given not out because of the vagaries of an umpire’s call.
Take just one example: when an umpire gives a batsman not out in an LBW situation, the decision can only be overturned if more than half of the ball is going to hit the stumps. But if the umpire actually gives the same decision as out, only a part of the ball needs to be hitting the stumps.
So we have the situation, because of an umpire’s call, where the same incident can be out and not out.
A batsman can die by the technology. And he can live by it. So let the technology prevail, unfortunately!
I thought, too, the New Zealand camp did itself no service by its supine approach to the incident and its general approach to putting pressure on the Australians.
There is an old adage in sport: “Nice guys finish last!”
This is not a call for a nasty, vindictive form of sledging where the experience of being on the field is made a misery through an endless chatter of abuse and nastiness.
But Test cricket is a hard game. Success comes to those teams that are hard in their play and their tactics.
Steve Smith, on the evidence of this series, has got the balance right for his side. The Australians were aggressive with bat and ball. But they were not obnoxious, as teams in the recent past have been.
When Mitchell Starc, early on in the series, threw a ball deliberately at a batsman after conceding a boundary, Smith put him firmly but politely in his place by telling him publicly this sort of reaction was not on.
The New Zealanders went overboard, I thought, to be polite. So much so that, in fact, the politeness became obsequiousness.
So we had Brendon McCullum suggesting that the Llong blunder “definitely had a bearing on the game. At the time, it was incredibly frustrating… ”
This is nonsense. Llong should have been given the full blast of an attack on his competency from MacCullum, especially as virtually every controversial decision in the series went against the New Zealand.
And on the field, the same sort of fawning politeness was the New Zealand response to most situations with players going out of their way to shake hands with an Australian batsmen he made, say, 50 or not bowling sandshoe-crushers at Mitchell Starc’s damaged foot when he came into bat.
My view is that the New Zealand team is playing a glass of beer game with a pinkie extended from their grip as if they were playing a cup of tea game.
As for the pink ball experiment and with it the start of day’s play in the Test two hours later than the usual 11am beginning, I reserve judgment.
I actually like to see batsmen score a lot of runs and bowlers having to work hard and be exceptional in taking big bags of wickets. I’d like to see more evidence that the pink ball format does not give us ball-dominated Tests.
Moreover, at the cathedrals of the game like the SCG I would hope that the traditional red ball and the time-honoured playing regime is maintained.
Having said that, I acknowledge that Test cricket is now more of an arena event than a sporting occasion. The night lights do add a dramatic effect to the play. Everything is somehow made more dramatic under the lights.
There was a sense of theatre under the lights at Adelaide that the players seemed to revel in.
Just as the darkened theatre is now the norm with the invention of the lime-lights, the night Test under the lights, presumably with the pink ball, will become the norm. But not at the SCG for a long while, I hope.