Alex Carey, the Australia wicketkeeper, was caught up in another Ashes controversy after admitting he edged a ball that was given not out by DRS (Decision Review System) technology in an apparent timing mistake.
England are considering an official complaint to the ICC over the accuracy of ‘Snicko’ after a critical moment on the opening day in Adelaide went Australia’s way.
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Carey made a magnificent hundred in front on his home ground, but admitted afterwards that “luck” was on his side when he survived an England review in bizarre fashion on 72.
Josh Tongue had recently dismissed Josh Inglis and, with Australia 245 for six, the game had reached a vital juncture. Carey had a waft outside off stump and, despite umpire Ahsan Raza turning their appeal down, England’s fielders were utterly convinced Carey was out.
The Decision Review System’s technology in Australia is Real-Time Snicko (RTS). This showed a huge spike – suggesting an edge – but the timing did not tally with the vision. The evidence was not there for the TV umpire Chris Gaffaney to overturn Raza’s decision, but Carey duly confessed to edging the ball. He went on to make 106, as Australia reached tumps on 326 for eight, a strong position.
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“I thought there was a bit of a feather or some sort of noise when it passed the bat,” said Carey. “It looked a bit funny on the replay, didn’t it, with the noise coming early? If I was given out, I think I would have reviewed it – probably not confidently though. It was a nice sound as it passed the bat, yeah.
“Snicko obviously didn’t line up, did it? That’s just the way cricket goes sometimes, isn’t it? You have a bit of luck, and maybe it went my way today.”
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Asked if he was a walker, Carey smiled: “Clearly not”.
Carey was at the centre of one of the biggest controversies in Ashes history two years ago at Lord’s when he ran out Jonny Bairstow despite the England batsman believing the ball was dead. The ensuing row that erupted led to then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak declaring the dismissal was “just not cricket” in a scandal that lit the fuse between the two sides and caused the infamous Lord’s Long Room incident when Marylebon Cricket Club members verbally abused the Australian team as they came off the pitch.
The host broadcaster decides which brand of technology to use; in England, Sky Sports use UltraEdge rather than the RTS system deployed in Australia.
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England’s bowling consultant David Saker took a dim view of the situation, arguing that the calibration of RTS has been wrong all series.
“The boys were pretty confident he hit it,” he said. “I think the calibration of the snicko is out quite a bit and that has probably been the case for the series. There’s been some things that don’t really measure up. At that stage, it was a pretty important decision. Those things hurt, but you get through it. In this day and age you’d think the technology is good enough to pick things up like that.”
Asked if England would be making representations, Saker said: “I don’t think we’ve done anything about it so far but after today, maybe that might go a bit further. There have been concerns about it for the whole series. We shouldn’t be talking about this after a day’s play, it should just be better than that. It is what it is.”
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England are expected to take the matter up with the match referee Jeff Crowe of New Zealand. In the first Test in Perth, England wicketkeeper Jamie Smith was given out despite the frames of Snicko not quite matching up.
Ironically, in the opening day in Adelaide, England were possibly the beneficiaries soon after Carey’s edge, when Australia captain Pat Cummins appeared a little surprised to be given out caught at short leg off the inside edge.
The respected former umpire Simon Taufel said on broadcaster Channel 7 that he felt Carey had edged the ball, backing up the view of experienced pundits such as Ricky Ponting.
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“The DRS was applied and for the third umpire to overturn the not out decision, we need to see a clear deflection off the bat, or we have to see a spike next to the bat or up to one frame past the bat,” he said.
“The confusing element here for everyone was that the spike occurred at least a couple of frames before the bat. Which was just amazing. What was interesting in this particular case and in my experience, I have never seen a spike like this occur without the bat hitting something like a pad or the ground or the ball hitting the pad.
“There’s nothing else out there, absolutely nothing else out there, so my gut tells me from all of my experience on field and also as a TV Umpire that I think Alex Carey has actually hit that ball and the technology calibration hasn’t been quite right to game the outcome that it was looking for.”
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