Out, or not out?
Martin Johnson isn't a fan of the umpire review system
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
Martin Johnson isn't a fan of the umpire review system. Read his take on it in the Sunday Times.
Even for those who hold that cutting down on human error must be in the game’s best interests, there must be something fundamentally disturbing about the sight of a batsman declining to leave the field despite being given out by the umpire. Apart from WG, the only other recorded case of this happening in pre-referral days was in the Lahore Test of 1987, when Stuart Broad’s dad, Chris, took one look at the finger raised before him, and raised, metaphorically speaking, a couple back himself. They were just about to send for a forklift truck when his batting partner, Graham Gooch, finally talked him into leaving.
On the evidence so far, it is a recipe for organised chaos, an illustration both of the limitations of technology and man's ability to interpret the results it is meant to elicit. The influence that reviews can have on the course of a match has been abundantly clear in the first Test in Kingston, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent on Sunday.
In the Telegraph, Steve James also wrote that Test cricket was no place to trial the umpire referral system.
George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo