Red faces on a pink day
Mike Coward writes in the Australian that the first day at the SCG wasn't just marked by the colour pink but by red faces all round, including the umpire Billy Doctrove, who had what was generally regarded as a good lbw call overturned on review.
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
Mike Coward writes in the Australian that the first day at the SCG wasn't just marked by the colour pink but by red faces all round, including the umpire Billy Doctrove, who had what was generally regarded as a good lbw call overturned on review.
Little wonder so many members of the umpiring community are so uneasy about the system. Doctrove deserves an apology, not a crowd of 29,844 believing he made a serious error of judgment. This was not the type of decision for which the technology has been introduced. To suggest Doctrove's decision was a howler is an affront to the umpiring fraternity.
In the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck dispels the notion that the SCG pitch was a brute and argues that Australia's batsmen needed to show greater application.
It is on tracks of this sort that famous innings are played. Grafters like Bill Lawry, Ken Barrington, Hanif Mohammad and others prided themselves on their ability to dig in until conditions improved. They displayed enough grit to tar a road.
Greg Baum in the Age believes the second Test is as unrecognisable from the first as Sydney is from Melbourne, Ben Dorries in the Courier-Mail wonders why cricket must be delayed by the lightest of rain, and in the Australian, Peter Lalor looks at Phillip Hughes' day.
Brydon Coverdale is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets here