Third umpire should spot no-balls, feels Adam Gilchrist

Whenever the history of the year 2019 will be written, two things will dominate the narrative comprehensively. Yep! You guessed it right. Firstly, the number of matches that were marred, curtailed or abandoned by rain and secondly, the constant back and forth around the creation of new rules or scrapping the redundant ones.

Who can forget the farce in which the 2019 World Cup final ended? That the biggest game of the tournament had to be decided on the basis of a boundary count exposed the fragility of the rules. The boundary-count rule has been scrapped now but one issue that has been a source of contention for a long time was still to be dealt with.

In the past few days, the BCCI has been in the news for proposing a plethora of new ideas to the IPL governing council. While the idea of “Power Player” has come under intense scrutiny, the other recommendation of introducing a separate umpire (fourth umpire) whose sole work will be to monitor the front-foot and waist-high no balls.

In the past few years, the on-field umpires have come under the spotlight for missing a plethora of front foot no balls. Things came to a head when the umpire S Ravi missed a crucial no-ball during an RCB v MI game. The Umpire had come under fire courtesy a fuming Virat Kohli.

“We are playing at the IPL level. It’s not club level, the umpires should have their eyes open. That was a big no-ball,” a livid Virat Kohli had said at the post-match presentation ceremony back then. 

According to the recommendation put forth by the BCCI, it will not be the regular third umpire who will call the shots as far as no-balls are concerned but it will be a specially assigned official with the designation of being called a “Fifth Umpire”. 

Adam Gilchrist has his say on the introduction ‘Fourth Umpire’ for no-ball spotting

Former Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist is all-in for the concept, however, the former IPL-winning captain feels that the third umpire should have been good enough to spot the no-balls.

“It is pretty challenging for the on-field umpire to look down there, look up there, have everything else going on. Surely there was a replay last year that showed it was a no-ball. That should be allowed, whether you need the fourth umpire, maybe not why can’t the third umpire just look at the replay and just go ‘not out’. That is the simpler version I would have thought. If it means having a fourth one (umpire) and he is going to get the right decision I am all for it,” said Gilchrist as quoted by Sportstar.

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