Ben Stokes says he has received a clarification from the match referee following Zak Crawley’s contentious lbw dismissal on the fourth evening at Rajkot.
According to Stokes, Jeff Crowe admitted to an error in the graphic which was shown during the review, but insisted that the decision to give Crawley out was correct.
Crawley was the only member of the England top five to make it to double figures as the tourists collapsed to 122 all out to lose by 434 runs. He was given out lbw off the bowling of Jasprit Bumrah, with Crawley, England’s tallest player, hit high on the back leg.
The opener reviewed, but to no avail, with ball-tracking technology sending him on his way. However, there was confusion within the England camp as the graphic seemed to show the ball just missing, rather than just clipping the stumps, and Stokes sought out the match referee for an explanation after the game.
“He was just giving us some information around how it was judged to be given out when the ball wasn’t hitting the stumps on the DRS replay,” he told TalkSPORT. “The ball didn’t hit the stump on the replay, but it was apparently that the numbers said it was hitting the stump but the image was wrong. I don’t really understand what’s gone on there.”
This is not the first debated decision England have been on the wrong end of this series, with Stokes questioning the technology in Crawley’s second innings dismissal in the second Test and Ollie Pope’s dismissal in the first innings at Rajkot also coming in for criticism. However, Stokes, as at Visakhapatnam, was reluctant to put England’s result down to officiating.
❎ "The ball didn't hit the stump on the replay. We should take away umpires call."
📹 "When the people in charge of it are saying that something's gone wrong, then that says enough."
Ben Stokes chats to @cameronponsonby about the DRS decisions in their defeat 🏏 #INDvENG pic.twitter.com/89RWI4LT7Z
— talkSPORT Cricket (@Cricket_TS) February 18, 2024
“I don’t think that’s something that you pin down to the result of a game because there’s so many factors into it,” he said. “Sometimes when you get on the wrong end of those decisions it does hurt, but that’s part of the game. You want them to go your way. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, but I don’t think you want to be too picky around those ones.”
He did, however, advocate for umpire’s call to scrapped when reviewing lbw decisions, in order to create a “level playing field”.
“I think you just want some kind of level playing field,” Stokes said. “The umpires have an incredibly hard job as it is, especially out in India where the ball is spinning and bouncing and sometimes not. My personal opinion is that if the ball’s hitting the stumps, the ball’s hitting the stumps. I think you should take away umpire’s call if I’m being perfectly honest, but I don’t want to get too much into it because then it sounds like we’re moaning about that as why we lost.”
