Former international umpire Ian Gould has indicated he felt the Decision Review System made a mistake in overturning his lbw decision against Sachin Tendulkar in India’s 2011 Cricket World Cup semi-final against Pakistan.
Tendulkar was on 23 when initially given out in the 11th over, bowled by Saeed Ajmal. He went onto make 85, securing the Player of the Match award as the hosts won by 29 runs on the way to their second World Cup title.
The decision sparked immediate outrage, with many calling into question the predicted path of the ball shown by the Hawk-Eye technology, which showed the ball heading down the leg-side.
Stephen Carter, the managing director of Hawk-Eye Innovations, put out a statement defending the decision at the time. “The path Hawk-Eye showed was accurate and the Decision Review System was used correctly to overturn the umpire’s original decision,” Carter said. “The Hawk-Eye track lines up perfectly with the video of the real ball from release to impact point.”
However, in an interview with ESPNcricinfo, Gould, the umpire who had his decision overturned, said “it was dead” of the leg-before shout, and that he would give it out again.
[breakout id=”0″][/breakout] “Don’t go down that road,” he said, when asked about the decision. “I get teased about that. People send me pictures of my reaction after I was told in my ear by Billy Bowden that it was missing leg stump. It makes me laugh. It didn’t make me laugh at the time, I can assure you. But I’d give it out again with my back to the wall. It was dead. I don’t know what happened.”
