After the crushing defeat against India in the Rajkot Test, England captain Ben Stokes has demanded abolition of umpire call. This statement of Stokes came on the fourth day regarding the wicket of Jack Crawley who was given out due to umpire call. The English captain says that he was at the wrong end not once or twice but thrice. Stokes has pleaded that the teams should have a level playing field and the decision should be absolute.
When Jasprit Bumrah’s ball hit Crawley’s pad in the 9th over of England’s second innings, umpire Kumar Dharmasena raised his finger. The English opener opted for DRS and the ball-tracker showed the ball touching leg stump, forcing Crawley to back off. After the match, Stokes and McCullum were seen chatting with match referee Jeff Crowe.
Speaking to the media after the match, Stokes said that he believes that the job of umpires is very difficult and ambiguities need to be removed. Ben Stokes said, “We have been on the wrong end of umpire calls three times in this match and that is part of DRS. You are either on the right side or on the wrong side. Unfortunately, we have been on the wrong side. You just Want a level playing field. Umpires have an incredibly tough job, especially in India when the ball is moving.”
He further said, “My personal opinion is that if the ball is hitting the stumps, it is hitting the stumps. If I am completely honest, they should remove the ‘umpire call’. I am not going to get too into it. Want to because it seems like we are moaning and saying that this is why we lost the Test match.”
Talking about the match, India won the toss and batted first and scored 445 runs on the board with the help of centuries from captain Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja. In front of this score, England’s first innings was reduced to 319 runs.India started the second innings with a lead of 125 runs and this time too scored more than 400.On the basis of Yashasvi Jaiswal’s double century, India put 430 runs on the board in the second innings and gave the target of 557 runs to the English team.In front of this score, the England team proved to be a failure and was reduced to only 122 runs.India won this match by a margin of 434 runs. This is India’s biggest win in terms of runs.
