As a specialist batsman, getting out to a part-timer is bad enough, but when you feel you’ve been wronged in doing so, it can be especially hard to take.

Dean Elgar was the unfortunate batsman on the fourth day of South Africa’s second Test against England, given out caught behind off leg-spinner Joe Denly, though the delay umpire Paul Reiffel took in giving him out and the immediacy of Elgar’s review suggested a mistake might have been made.

[caption id=”attachment_133969″ align=”alignnone” width=”800″] Joe Denly claimed his first Test wicket, but did Dean Elgar nick it?[/caption]

The splitscreen replay showed no gap between bat and ball, and UltraEdge revealed the tiniest of spikes, so TV umpire Chris Gaffaney told Reiffel to stick with his decision, but the drama didn’t end there, with Elgar clearly unhappy, and telling Sky Sports Cricket after stumps that he felt he had been wrongly given out.

“I wouldn’t waste a referral knowing that I’ve nicked it,” he said. “I don’t play cricket like that. I like to see myself as someone who takes their ‘outs’ when they’re out and like I said I wouldn’t waste it on that. It’s a bit of an emotional time when something like that happens, but after you simmer down and watch the footage, I can honestly say right now I haven’t hit it.”

Since UltraEdge did reveal a small sound, the follow up question asked what created that spike, or if there was an issue with the technology, and though Elgar was unwilling to comment on the latter, he supported the theory that his elbow hitting his pad could have misled the microphone.

“I’m going to reserve my comments [on the technology] because I don’t want to get into trouble with the ICC. But no, as a player, I’m very confident that I didn’t nick it. Our coach also alluded to that [the elbow-pad theory], but it is what it is and so be it, it’s part of what creates the theatre of Test cricket. Sometimes you have those things go your way and sometimes you don’t.”

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Commentator Michael Atherton sympathised with Elgar, and agreed that a mistake might have been made, but that fault lay only with the on-field Reiffel, and not with Gaffaney.

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“The key thing was that the umpire gave it out on the field,” he said. “Instinctively I don’t think that Dean Elgar hit that. He’s an honest chap, he said he didn’t hit it to you and I believe him. But the problem is that the umpire gave it out on the field, so what is the third umpire to do? The only thing the third umpire can do is if there’s absolutely incontrovertible evidence that the on-field umpire has made a mistake he can overturn it. There was a little something there on UltraEdge, so I have sympathy for the decision the third umpire made, I think instinctively the on-field umpire got it wrong.”

Related tags:

Dean ElgarInternational CricketSeries EditorialSouth Africa v England