England may lodge a proper grievance after technical error appeared to value them the wicket of pantomime villain Alex Carey – who went on to make a century
England will consider making a formal complaint about the quality of the technology in use during the Ashes after Australia’s wicketkeeper Alex Carey admitted getting away with a thin edge on the first day of the crucial third Test in Adelaide.
Carey, who went on to make an emotional century at his home ground as Australia closed on 326 for eight, had 72 when he appeared to underedge a delivery from Josh Tongue through to Jamie Smith, even indicating to England’s fielders that he thought he had hit it.
But the RTS – Real-Time Snicko – being used in this series has regularly failed to align the audio and visual components of reviews, unlike the more accurate Ultra-Edge used in Tests in England. In this instance, the audio seemed to come before the visual, meaning the spike on Snicko appeared before the ball hit the bat.
That persuaded TV umpire Chris Gaffaney to reject England’s review, leaving bowling coach David Saker to complain: ‘The boys were pretty confident he hit it. I think the calibration of the snick 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 might take the matter up with officials, he replied: ‘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.’
England thought they had Alex Carey caught behind when he was on 72, but RTS failed to indicate an edge
The Australian wicket-keeper even appeared to admit that he hit it, but went on to make 100
Carey admitted: ‘I thought there was a bit of a feather or some sort of noise when it passed the bat. 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.’
Asked if he was a walker, Carey replied: ‘Clearly not.’
