Stuart Broad - Should he have walked, or was he right to stand his ground?....

[Danny-Boy]

I always walked as a player, part of the beauty of the game for me. Sad to see the days of fair play are pretty much over in the pro game, and have been for some time.

Spenning mistake here..

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

The umpire has to give him out. Its all about professionalism nowadays , advantages and disadvantages. All the kids playing football now put their hands up for the throw in even when they've put the ball over the line.

 

[pasty]

Dunno why we don't play for HIS ashes.

Probably because he was buried not cremated

 

[rcf0712]

I don't care who you support or what stage of the game it is, walk if you know you are out. Honour in cricket died when Gilchrist retired, and before you all unload, I still support England in cricket and always will.

 

[Chesney Christ]

I don't care who you support or what stage of the game it is, walk if you know you are out. Honour in cricket died when Gilchrist retired, and before you all unload, I still support England in cricket and always will.

I presume you don't play the game then?!

 

[keaton]

If Australia hadn't wasted their referrals on rather frivolous LBW appeals then they'd have been able to refer to the third umpire and get the decision overturned. Australia used up their referrals thinking they could rip through the England middle order, but in doing so, they took a gamble and 150-200 runs later, it meant they couldn't use the system when they had legitimate cause to overturn a decision. What needs to happen is for the third umpire to have discretion to inform the umpire of when they have missed an incident that wasn't able to be reviewed.

Vaughan and an Aussie on TMS said this and i'm not sure I understand this.

You give teams two referrals to cut out umpiring errors. They choose to use them on marginal calls and as a result don't have a referral for an actual error. You think in that case the third umpire should intervene anyway? Why?
The current system is fine unless human error in the referral process occurs.

 

[Bold Seagull]

I don't care who you support or what stage of the game it is, walk if you know you are out. Honour in cricket died when Gilchrist retired, and before you all unload, I still support England in cricket and always will.

Players have and haven't walked since the game was started. Gilchrist just happened to be a high profile walker, which I might add infuriated the rest of his team, especially Ponting who never walked - if he hadn't been so bloody good he'd have been dropped because of it and said as much in his book.

In the context of the game, with Agar not being given out on 6, Root being given out not hitting it (although England should have reviewed that one) and Trott's (which for me was the biggest mistake of all them), Broad not walking was perfectly understandable - let the umpire make the decision, something Gilchrist actually defended Broad for. Look at Root, he looked at his captain without knowing if he'd hit it or not, and didn't review, but technology should he hadn't hit it.

Honour in cricket died when Greg Chappell order his brother to bowl an underarm pea roller for Australia's last delivery with NZ needing a 6 off the last ball to win. That was in 1981. Or when England starting bowling Bodyline, etc. etc. You are in cloud cuckoo land if you think honour in the game died with Gilchrist!

 

[DJ Leon]

I think whether the Aussies would have walked or not is irrelevant, a complete red herring morally and ethically.

Broad cheated. He is a cheat. You can dress it up any way you like (and don't worry, plenty of media and ex-players will make excuses for him tomorrow, be apologists, come up with phrases like 'it's the modern way' and go very soft on the issue).

Some, hopefully, will be a bit braver including I imagine Paul Hayward. Ultimately you take responsibility for your own actions. It could have been Broad's 'Di Canio' moment. Instead it has soured any England win, and they have totally forfeited any right to ever have a go at Australian sportsmanship ever again.

The piss-poor umpiring, again, is a separate issue. That has nothing to do with cheating. They are mistakes.

Woah there! What rule did Broad break to deserve being called a cheat?

You can argue that it is in the spirit of the game to walk, but the batsman has no obligation to do so. It's better then to call out bad sportsmanship rather than cheating.

I'm actually a bit baffled by this debate. Broad's 'wicket' was notable for its obviousness, but batsmen every game, perhaps every innings, do not walk when they know they are out. Is the difference just how obvious it is? Is that fair?

 

[keaton]

Woah there! What rule did Broad break to deserve being called a cheat?

You can argue that it is in the spirit of the game to walk, but the batsman has no obligation to do so. It's better then to call out bad sportsmanship rather than cheating.

I'm actually a bit baffled by this debate. Broad's 'wicket' was notable for its obviousness, but batsmen every game, perhaps every innings, do not walk when they know they are out. Is the difference just how obvious it is? Is that fair?

Indeed, there were at least four edges to keeper in the test and only Bairstow walked, yet everyone else has escaped criticism

 

[joeinbrighton]

Vaughan and an Aussie on TMS said this and i'm not sure I understand this.

You give teams two referrals to cut out umpiring errors. They choose to use them on marginal calls and as a result don't have a referral for an actual error. You think in that case the third umpire should intervene anyway? Why?
The current system is fine unless human error in the referral process occurs.

What I'm saying is that the third umpire should only intervene if an obvious error has occurred from the on-field umpire, but where the 'wronged' team is not in a position to challenge because they've used up their challenges. It should be at the third umpire's discretion, however, if they feel that they have seen something glaring that the on-field umpire has missed.

The referrals system will always have flaws because every team will try and work them to their advantage. In Australia's case, they used theirs up quickly in the hope of getting the decisions to build up momentum. In future, you would imagine Michael Clarke will become more selective about when he uses them, as Alastair Cook was in this last test match.

 

[keaton]

What I'm saying is that the third umpire should only intervene if an obvious error has occurred from the on-field umpire, but where the 'wronged' team is not in a position to challenge because they've used up their challenges. It should be at the third umpire's discretion, however, if they feel that they have seen something glaring that the on-field umpire has missed.

The referrals system will always have flaws because every team will try and work them to their advantage. In Australia's case, they used theirs up quickly in the hope of getting the decisions to build up momentum. In future, you would imagine Michael Clarke will become more selective about when he uses them, as Alastair Cook was in this last test match.

If teams used them only to over-turn blatant errors rather than marginal ones the system would work fine.
What you're suggesting would make it worse as they could use them for marginal ones with the knowledge that a blatant error will get picked up on anyway.

 

[joeinbrighton]

If teams used them only to over-turn blatant errors rather than marginal ones the system would work fine.
What you're suggesting would make it worse as they could use them for marginal ones with the knowledge that a blatant error will get picked up on anyway.

I'm suggesting the 3rd umpire has the power of attorney to overturn blatant errors in the event of a team having used up their review. The 3rd umpire isn't going to get involved in overturning marginal LBW decisions unless a referral has been made to him. It won't make it worse because those instances would happen very rarely and it would also only happen at the 3rd umpire's discretion, so teams using referrals for marginal calls couldn't be relying on the 3rd umpire to pick up an obvious error later because they'd have no power to make the referral to him if they'd used up their challenges. It would be a case of the 3rd umpire seeing something on the TV and communicating directly to the on-field umpire. A bit like the 4th official communicated to the referee in the 2006 World Cup that he'd seen Zidane butt Materazzi's chest via the TV replay. The only difference would be that TV evidence would have been ratified this time!

 

[Tooting Gull]

Woah there! What rule did Broad break to deserve being called a cheat?

You can argue that it is in the spirit of the game to walk, but the batsman has no obligation to do so. It's better then to call out bad sportsmanship rather than cheating.

I'm actually a bit baffled by this debate. Broad's 'wicket' was notable for its obviousness, but batsmen every game, perhaps every innings, do not walk when they know they are out. Is the difference just how obvious it is? Is that fair?

Of course he cheated. He has known since the age of about four what the rules are, and probably since about 10 what the 'spirit' of the game is. You middle the ball with your bat and someone catches it, you are out. Simples. End of discussion. You could apply the bad sportsmanship to the other things he did in the same Test (warned for running on the wicket, and the deliberate time-wasting - Christ he had a stormer, didn't he?)

I am truly amazed by some of the comparisons made on this thread. This wasn't a slight nick (where genuinely the batsman isn't 100 per cent sure). It was one of, if not the, most blatant example I have ever seen and Broad definitely knew. And the one about Agar's stumping is just crazy, he wouldn't have had a clue whether he was in or out. It's a total non-comparison.

Maybe it is just an unwillingness to lay this at the door of an Englishman. If it had been dirty Jonny Foreigner, I daresay the apologists and excuse-makers might have sung a slightly different tune. I'm sorry, if this had been Pakistan, there would have been uproar.

What Broad had to realise - admittedly very quickly - was just that, it was a very, very blatant example, everyone else had seen it, and that's why he had to walk. I wouldn't be saying this if it had been a very slight nick. It means a brilliant Test will be remembered as much for what he did as the Anderson feats and everything else. It was a terrible example for kids.

I am very happy to side with the likes of Jonathan Agnew and Simon Hughes who have called it the same way. It's a shame more of the pundits weren't brave enough to join them.

And of course it doesn't help that the incident was hugely significant, I think they put on another 59 runs afterwards just for that wicket? Test won by 14 runs.

 

[Brovion]

I'm suggesting the 3rd umpire has the power of attorney to overturn blatant errors in the event of a team having used up their review. The 3rd umpire isn't going to get involved in overturning marginal LBW decisions unless a referral has been made to him. It won't make it worse because those instances would happen very rarely and it would also only happen at the 3rd umpire's discretion, so teams using referrals for marginal calls couldn't be relying on the 3rd umpire to pick up an obvious error later because they'd have no power to make the referral to him if they'd used up their challenges. It would be a case of the 3rd umpire seeing something on the TV and communicating directly to the on-field umpire. A bit like the 4th official communicated to the referee in the 2006 World Cup that he'd seen Zidane butt Materazzi's chest via the TV replay. The only difference would be that TV evidence would have been ratified this time!

I'm not sure how that would work, because even if they couldn't appeal directly you'd have players constantly waiting for the third umpire to make a decision every time they thought that a 'blatant' (i.e. marginal) decision has gone against them. Effectively every decision would be reviewed by two umpires. And then there is the definition of what is 'blatant'. If England had used up all their appeals was Haddin's edge yesterday 'blatant'?

 

[joeinbrighton]

And of course it doesn't help that the incident was hugely significant, I think they put on another 59 runs afterwards just for that wicket? Test won by 14 runs.

Had Australia won, would you have felt that Ashton Agar scoring a further 92 runs after he'd been stumped but had been given not out (wrongly) had been the game changer? Australia added over 100 runs after that decision, whereas Broad made another 28 runs and England about another 70-80 runs after his edge, so in fact Australia benefited more from the Agar decision than England did from Broad in terms of pure mathematics.

 

[joeinbrighton]

I'm not sure how that would work, because even if they couldn't appeal directly you'd have players constantly waiting for the third umpire to make a decision every time they thought that a 'blatant' (i.e. marginal) decision has gone against them. Effectively every decision would be reviewed by two umpires. And then there is the definition of what is 'blatant'. If England had used up all their appeals was Haddin's edge yesterday 'blatant'?

They could only do that if they had the power of a referral. The 3rd umpire would be responsible for instigating contact with the on-field umpire and would only do so in exceptional circumstances, i.e. where there had been a glaringly obvious error over a key decision and where a team could not make a referral. That's not going to happen with borderline LBW decisions. Really, it would only happen every now and again, possibly only once or twice in an entire series at the most.

 

[Tooting Gull]

Had Australia won, would you have felt that Ashton Agar scoring a further 92 runs after he'd been stumped but had been given not out (wrongly) had been the game changer? Australia added over 100 runs after that decision, whereas Broad made another 28 runs and England about another 70-80 runs after his edge, so in fact Australia benefited more from the Agar decision than England did from Broad in terms of pure mathematics.

As I said above, the two incidents are in no way comparable. One was very borderline and lacking a crucial angle (the other side), one was blatant. In the same way I would cut a linesman slack if a player was an inch offside, but not if was 10 yards.

 

[Brovion]

They could only do that if they had the power of a referral. The 3rd umpire would be responsible for instigating contact with the on-field umpire and would only do so in exceptional circumstances, i.e. where there had been a glaringly obvious error over a key decision and where a team could not make a referral. That's not going to happen with borderline LBW decisions. Really, it would only happen every now and again, possibly only once or twice in an entire series at the most.

But again you've got a subjective terms in there: 'Glaringly obvious'. To me it was glaringly obvious that Haddin had edged it and it would have been an utter travesty if he'd been given not out, but Australian fans might disagree. Under your system, if England had used up their referrals, should the third umpire have halted play whilst he reviewed it and debated in his mind as to whether it was 'glaring' enough to overrule the on-field umpire?

 

[Tooting Gull]

The Broad debate reminds me very much of something that Michael Owen said last year at the Leaders in Football conference, that got him into a lot of trouble - and was all about where the lines fall between professionalism, sportsmanship and cheating.

He basically admitted in an open forum in front of hundreds of people including media that he had gone to ground against Argentina in the World Cup in the area when he didn't have to, and could have stayed on his feet under the tiniest of contact.

This was portrayed the next day, in various ways and some stronger than others, as cheating or diving. He could have stayed upright, but chose not to.

Owen reacted furiously, mainly because he simply could not understand how some people out there might interpret his comments. If you could have stayed up but went down, isn't that a dive? And isn't diving cheating?

As with this case, the debate is polarised. Some people don't give a monkey's anyway if England win, or see it as part of the professional's tool-kit.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Even the great Sir Donald Bradman didn't walk. He said that you were given out enough times when you weren't for it to be justified to stand your ground and let the umpire make the decision.