Snicko has been a point of confusion and controversy during this Ashes series and there was a fresh talking point on the first day in Adelaide as Alex Carey escaped England’s vociferous appeal and review.
Carey was on 72 when he tried to cut a Josh Tongue delivery which bounced across the left hander. England’s slip cordon were convinced they heard a noise and appealed immediately, but umpire Ahsan Raza was unmoved.
England reviewed the decision and Snicko showed a clear spike, but it failed to match with the picture, appearing two frames before the ball passed the bat.
Carey was cleared and went on to make his first Ashes century. “Got a bit of luck there,” he later admitted.
England’s bowling coach, David Saker called for the technology to improve.
“There was obviously a spike but it was either really early or late,” he said. “Our boys are really confident he hit, Jamie Smith behind the stumps is not the sort of guy who would be like that unless he thought that.
“But you’ve got the technology. We’re pretty confident he hit but he’d be the person to be asking. He did look guilty. That’s the technology and I think they need to make sure it’s working better than it did. Even the Patty Cummins one, there seemed to some timings out.”
Speaking on Australia’s Channel 7, the former international umpire Simon Taufel called it an “amazing” incident that he’d never seen before.
“The DRS was applied and for the third umpire to overturn the not out decision, we need to see a clear deflection off the bat, or we have to see a spike next to the bat or up to one frame past the bat,” Taufel said. “The confusing element here for everyone was that the spike occurred at least a couple of frames before the bat, which was just amazing.”
He added: “What was interesting in this particular case and in my experience, I have never seen a spike like this occur without the bat hitting something like a pad or the ground or the ball hitting the pad.
“There’s nothing else out there, absolutely nothing else out there, so my gut tells me from all of my experience on-field and also as a TV umpire that I think Alex Carey has actually hit that ball and the technology calibration hasn’t been quite right to game the outcome that it was looking for.”
more to follow…
