Low catches. Australia captain Pat Cummins has expressed that cricket needs to find another, more efficient way to decide whether the same are grabbed cleanly or not.
“I don’t really know the answers, but there has to be a way to try and improve it somehow,” Cummins said post the Australia-South Africa three-match Test series. “I think as it currently stands, it’s really hard to give a batter out. If there’s any kind of benefit of the doubt it goes his way. I think with a couple of camera angles really slow down it’s pretty hard to not find doubt somewhere.”
The third Test between the two nations in Sydney featured quite a few instances of debated decisions regarding low catches. Steve Smith was involved on two occasions. His one handed catch of Dean Elgar and front diving grab of Heinrich Klaasen were both deemed as invalid following replay checks from the third umpire.
Earlier in the match during Australia’s innings, Marnus Labuschagne had also nicked one behind to Simon Harmer, who seemed to have caught it at first glance but TV umpire Richard Kettleborough thought otherwise upon his examination.
“All of us thought it was out,” South African quick Anrich Nortje had said on the aforementioned incident. “Simon was convinced it went straight in [his hands]. When you look at the front on and if you look at the angles, it looks to us like fingers underneath it.”
Stating along the lines of what Cummins would say after day five’s action, Labuschagne had earlier suggested that modern tech allowed batters to survive longer in the middle.
“With the old rules of catching, if you felt like your fingers were under it, absolutely [it’s out], but in the new footage those are so scrutinised because you see so many angles,” he had said.