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The England captain Ben Stokes wants the umpire’s call in the Decision Review System (DRS) to be taken away after a “bemused” Zak Crawley’s LBW dismissal in the third Test against India in Rajkot. At the Niranjan Shah Stadium, England suffered one of their biggest Test defeats, losing by 434 runs against India in the final session on Day 4.
During his interview with talkSPORT after the third Test, Ben Stokes spoke about having a long discussion with the match referee Jeff Crowe about Zak Crawley’s LBW dismissal. He had argued that the ball didn’t hit the stumps on DRS replay, and despite that, Zak Crawley was given his marching orders on the umpire’s call after the original call was out.
It led to the match referee informing Ben Stokes about how the ball was hitting the stumps according to the numbers and the image was wrong. The England captain wasn’t too impressed with the explanation from the match referee and said, “I think when people are in charge of it says something has gone wrong than that says enough for it itself.”
Ben Stokes also sympathised with the umpires regarding their responsibilities on the playing field before stating his personal opinion of taking away the umpire’s call. He remarked, “You just want a level playing field I guess. The umpires have an incredibly hard job as it is, especially in India when the ball is spinning and bouncing, and sometimes not. My personal opinion is that if the ball is hitting the stumps, the ball is hitting the stumps. They should take away umpire’s call, if I’m being perfectly honest.”
“I don’t want to get too much into it because it sounds like we are moaning about that’s why we lost,” concluded the 32-year-old.
Watch Ben Stokes give his thoughts on umpire's call in DRS here:
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