It’s good news that umpire referrals will be used during the South Africa-England series after a very sensible system seemed to have been rejected at first.
The International Cricket Council, which likes to use fancy titles for simple jobs, announced that the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS) will be used when the first Test starts on December 16. Some people still cling to the “human factor” when it comes to umpiring and would easily add a T to URDS and rearrange the letters to make it something unagreeable.
I think the Udrs, which if you say it quickly sounds like a tribe in the Caucasus, is a damn good think. No doubt Brendon McCullum thinks so too.
This week, on the first day of the first Test against Pakistan, the New Zealand batsman-keeper was given out LBW by Simon Taufel to the second last ball of the day, bowled by Mohammad Asif. McCullum was hit high up on the pad, but he’d been out of his crease when he missed that ball. Nevertheless, he took his chance with the TV umpire, who reversed Taufel’s decision because Asif’s ball had pitched outside the off stump.
Whichever way you look at it, from a modern technophile point of view or a Philistinnic one, it is justice done. May there be many such occasions in South Africa this summer.

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