Australia's captain Ricky Ponting - AP Photo/Gautam Singh
On the first session of play on the third day of the second Test in the Australia-West Indies series, Ricky Ponting used up all his appeals available to him in the video-review system.
Later on in the day, when Doug Bollinger had an LBW appeal turned down against Brendan Nash, Australia was not able to refer the appeal to the video umpire.
As it happened, Hawke-eye showed that the appeal against Nash not playing a shot would have been upheld by the video umpire.
Later in the day Chanderpaul was given out LBW.
He and his captain Chris Gayle refused to jeopardise the West Indies’ two live appeals, a decision that was justified when Hawke-eye showed that the LBW was plumb.
As far I’m concerned, this sequence of events justifies the video-review system. It also casts doubts on the shrewdness of Ponting’s cricketing brain.
Both the umpiring decisions that Ponting contested involved the possibility of catches behind the wicket.
In one case, Adrian Barath clearly missed the ball but his bat caught his pad and there was a soft rather than hard sound just before the ball passed the bat.
In the second case, a ball from Mitchell Johnson cannoned off Chris Gayle’s pads and was caught very well down the leg side by Brad Haddin. There was no snick sound, although Gayle’s bat was jammed down pretty close to the ball as it careened off his pad.
The video-review evidence was conclusive that neither ball had touched the bat on their way through to the catchers. In both cases there was no hotspot on the bats. The decisions represented really splendid pieces of umpiring.
Why did Ponting use up his appeals contesting the decisions?
Both appeals came when Australia was struggling to break up the opening partnership. This was one factor, presumably. In the case of Gayle, Ponting correctly identified the West Indian captain as the danger man and was prepared to take a punt on getting rid of him.
In the past, before the video-review system, the bowler and his team-mates would have done Indian war dances to put the maximum pressure on the umpires in the hope that the strength of the appeal would sway the umpire.
The two bowlers concerned, Bollinger and Johnson, tend to respond strongly after they take a wicket, so that Ponting might have wanted to get them fired up for what was shaping up to be a long and hard day.
But in the end, it came down to a cool judgment of the likelihood of a positive outcome. Neither appeal was so clearly out (unlike Bollinger’s later LBW shout) to warrant wasting an appeal on it.
The system is designed to correct the obviously incorrect decision.
Ponting tried to squeeze an advantage from the system on decisions that were obviously not incorrect.
This is yet another example of his lack of shrewdness and judgement when what is happening on the field require a tough assessment of the pros and cons and the need to conserve the right of appeal against an umpire’s decision for those decisions that are clearly wrong.
In the end, it was the unlikely Gayle who kept his cool and his appeals for use, if necessary, at a later time in the innings.
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