ESPNcricinfo understands that Brendon McCullum and Wayne Bentley, England’s head coach and team manager respectively, held talks with Jeff Crowe, the match referee, after the close of play to air their grievances. The ECB will also encourage the ICC to review their systems to improve their decision-making processes in future.
TV umpire Chris Gaffaney upheld Ahsan Raza’s on-field “not out” decision after Carey, on 72, flashed at a ball from Josh Tongue outside off stump. There was a clear spike shown on the Real-Time Snickometer (RTS) several frames before the ball had passed the bat. “There’s a clear gap, no spike,” Gaffaney said.
But Carey, who went on to score 106, admitted after play that he thought he had hit the ball, saying he had “a bit of luck” and was “clearly not” a walker. BBG Sports, the supplier of RTS, later suggested that an operator had “selected the incorrect stump mic for audio processing” and took “full responsibility for the error”.
David Saker, England’s bowling coach, said on Wednesday night that the dressing room has harboured concerns about the reliability of RTS all series. “We shouldn’t be talking about this after a day’s play, it should just be better than that,” Saker said. “In this day and age, you’d think the technology is good enough to pick things up like that.”
Crowe’s decision means that England will have two reviews available to them on the second day in Adelaide, with Australia set to resume their innings of 326 for 8. It may be scant consolation to them given Carey was able to bat on and score a further 34 runs after being incorrectly given not out.
The ICC has two approved “sound-based edge detection technology” suppliers: RTS, which is used in Australia, and UltraEdge, which is used in the rest of the world. Ricky Ponting, the former Australia captain, said on Thursday morning that umpires “can’t trust” RTS and suggested that UltraEdge is superior.
“This technology that we are using here is simply not as good as technology that’s used in other countries,” Ponting said while commentating on Channel 7. “You talk to the umpires, they’ll tell you the same thing. They can’t trust it.
“They’ve got a third umpire sitting up in there that’s got to make decisions based on what he’s seeing that the technology is providing, and sometimes they have a gut feel that it’s not right. “That can’t happen. You’ve got to be able to trust the technology that’s in place.”
The ICC did not respond to a request for comment.
