A day after Pat Cummins’ dismissal of Mohammad Rizwan sparked a huge social media debate, Naseem Shah, all of 16 years old and on his Test debut, dismissed David Warner soon after the batsman crossed his half-century only to find that he had overstepped.
On day one of The Gabba Test, Cummins forced am edge off Rizwan’s bat in the 55th over. With the umpire raising his finger, the dismissal was referred to the TV umpire, Michael Gough, for the customary no-ball check. Several replays showed that Cummins’ foot was on the line but never behind it. Surprisingly, Gough chose to ignore the same and Rizwan was dismissed.
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The general convention in cricket has always been to give the benefit of doubt to the batsman for close calls, but here Cummins had clearly overstepped and the TV Umpire had chosen to ignore a basic law of the game.
“I’ll look at the scoreboard, it says a wicket. It’s the closest one I’ve had. Not sure what happened,” Cummins told Cricket 360. “I never like that feeling when they go upstairs after a wicket. Marnus [Labuschagne] said ‘that’s fine’, I wasn’t that confident but 100 metres away from the screen it’s hard to tell sometimes. I was a little nervous before they put the finger up.”
Waqar Younis, the Pakistan bowling coach, was more lenient – “It’s a tough one, it’s hard to say it was or wasn’t a no-ball. Touch and go, could have gone to either side. When you look at it closely it might be just over the line. To be fair I think it was a no-ball.”
On Channel 7, Ricky Ponting said: “I had a look at a lot of replays and I could not see any part of his foot land behind the line. Glenn McGrath’s beside me with his fast-bowler hat on saying there’s definitely just a millimetre behind the line. I couldn’t see it. It has not landed behind the line. Anyway, I’m obviously seeing things.”
On Day 2, Naseem Shah dismissed Warner and a similar check was sent to the TV Umpire. This time there was no confusion as Naseem had overstepped by a big margin.
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However, earlier in Naseem’s first Test over, broadcasters had shown that he had overstepped twice without the on-field umpire spotting it.