Indian batter KL Rahul trudged back to the dressing room after being disappointed by a controversial review decision that ruled him out on day 1 of the first Test in the Border-Gavaskar series. Rahul, sent to open the innings in the absence of regular skipper Rohit Sharma, had managed to see off the difficult initial phase when the ball seemed pretty much after India opted to bat first.
After facing 74 balls and playing a crucial role in making the new ball a bit old, Rahul's valiant 26-run knock came to an end in the 23rd over when Mitchell Starc got one outfoxing the Indian batter. He looked to defend a good length ball that was a little outside the off. As the ball passed the bat, Rahul hit his bat on his front pad and the umpires deemed him not out following Australia's appeal.
However, the hosts went upstairs and as it turned out, the third umpire ruled the Indian batter out. Rahul was disappointed and was seen expressing it to the umpires while walking back. Meanwhile, former cricketers Matthew Hayden and Sanjay Manjrekar have opened up on the dismissal, highlighting a major flaw in the snicko meter.
"Yeah, look, I really feel for KL Rahul. I think in our ears we heard a Nick, but look, the problem I have with Snicko is that it's actually a marriage of sound and vision. Now when things are travelling at 1/1,000 between frame, what my question was to the umpires was why weren't there two noises, because clearly there was the outside edge that was close and then afterwards, it then became bat on the pad. Why were there not two snicks? It was inconclusively conclusive," Hayden said on Star Sports on Day 1 of the first Test.
Former Indian cricketer Manjrekar also gave his views on the dismissal. "Noise was the bat hitting the pad, right, and we had the naked eye to confirm that it was the bat coming down and hitting the pad. And it's something that is very obvious. So, the snicko would have registered that. It does that because it makes a noise. Forget about the edge, the bat hitting the pad.
"You can see the pad actually moving. Now that audio should have been on the snicko, right? But the snicko is reacting only to one sound. So obviously, it's the pad sound if there was another reaction on the snicko earlier with the outside edge and the other one with the pad, and we see that so often where you see two reactions.
"Once it's the pad, the other is the bat. Here there was only one reaction and it had to be the bat hitting the pad because that was one certainty in that whole scheme of things, the bat hitting the pad because we could see it with the naked eye," he said.
India ended their innings on 150 with Nitish Reddy being the highest run-scorer. The Aussies are in big trouble and have lost seven wickets for 67 at the end of Day 1.
