In 2008, cricket evolved itself to become more refined and accurate. It introduced the Decision Review System (DRS) which aimed to improve the decision-making of umpires and reduce any bias or wrong decisions. To ensure that this automated system does not completely replace the human judgement of the on-field officials, an umpire’s call rule was introduced.
The contesting teams of the match are given a certain number of reviews which they can opt for in each in ings. A team’s fielding captain or the on-field batters opt for this review when they feel that there is an error in the umpire’s decision. An umpire’s call rule comes into action during a leg before wicket or caught behind dismissals.
If a leg before wicket dismissal is reviewed, it is first ensured that the delivered ball is legal (not a no ball). The third umpire checks whether the bat has made any contact with the ball. This is done through a snickometer. Later, after confirming that there is no involvement of the bat, a ball-tracking technology (hawk-eye) reveals the ball’s trajectory. It predicts where the ball would have gone on to hit in relation to the stumps.
Should the ball strike half of the bails or half of the off-stump, or half of the leg-stump, then whatever decision made by the umpire stands. The umpire’s call is criticized in scenarios when the on-field decision was originally not out, but the ball tracking shows half the bails or the stumps getting clipped. The reason why batters are not out in this case is because the area of the bails or the stumps that the ball clipped is more than 50% outside.
The umpire’s call is however a necessity for a very crucial element. Technology does not inculcate the amount of spin or swing on the ball during its projected trajectory as the ball goes on to hit the stumps. In this case, a human decision supersedes technology.
The umpire’s call thus continues to be used and is an integral part of the decision-making process.
