Oh Snicko, you’ve done it again.
If Snicko was batting and referred a decision to DRS, would it give itself out? “Depends”, would probably be the answer given the two recent controversial Snicko related decisions in the Ashes.
Before providing further analysis on yesterday’s decision, my view on the two incidents. The decision in the first Ashes Test where it was deemed Jamie Smith had edged the ball to Alex Carey off Brendan Doggett was correct (more on that in another post). Yesterday’s decision to deem Carey not out after snicking it to Jamie Smith was clearly wrong.
Now to yesterday’s decision. First of all, Carey must count himself very unlucky that Smith caught the ball. Smith is right up there with Jonny Bairstow’s skill level of being a backstop.
As can be seen from the vision, Carey under-edged the ball from Josh Tongue to Smith. The TV commentators said they clearly heard an edge as the ball passed Carey’s bat. Carey, himself, even appeared to admit he had edged the ball. When umpire Ahsan Raza gave the appeal not out, England rightfully referred the decision to the DRS. Much to everyone’s surprise, the DRS umpire, Chris Gaffaney, also gave the decision not out. What was confounding was the vision shown at the time had the sound spike occurring well before the ball reached Carey. My initial reaction was how could this happen. How could the alleged sophisticated technology be so far out of synch that the spike appeared well before the ball even reaching Carey? Initially, I didn’t have a ready answer except I thought it was perhaps a fundamental error in the way Snicko time synchs the sound and vision. I didn’t expect today’s statement by the company that runs Snicko that it was an error by the third umpire. Instead of selecting the batting end wicket’s microphone, Chris Gaffaney had chosen the bowler’s end microphone.
However, what further bothers me is the statement by BBG’s owner, Warren Brennan, that he isn’t 100 percent sure the mistake was because the wrong microphone was chosen. Brennan said, “Given that Alex Carey admitted he had hit the ball in question, the only conclusion that can be drawn from this, is that the ‘Snicko’ operator at the time must have selected the incorrect stump mic for audio processing.” While I expect this is the reason it is hardly a definitive statement by Brennan.
Another issue is that if the wrong microphone was chosen there was still a clear spike in the sound wave, so what caused this spike? As the spike was quite sharp it suggests it was an impact of some type. My opinion is it was caused by Tongue’s front foot hitting the pitch in the delivery stride. However, to answer this question, and to be able to make a definitive conclusion on what went wrong with yesterday’s Snicko decision, I would recommend to BBG that they do further analysis of the sound wave from the bowler’s end to determine what sound wave a fast bowler’s delivery typically produces. If it doesn’t match the sound wave seen yesterday, then Snicko and BBG have a significant problem.
From a bigger picture perspective, the ICC needs to decide on the most robust DRS system available and fund it for all Tests. Only then will there be confidence in reviewed decisions and, even then, I doubt it will be 100 percent.
The Chairman
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