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The Big Bash has been thrown into another umpiring controversy with Brisbane’s Tom Cooper being given out for LBW despite replays showing he clearly got bat to ball.
Fox Cricket commentator Shane Warne was adamant from the moment Adelaide Strikers players appealed for LBW that Cooper’s bat had made contact with Danny Briggs’ delivery.
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“Hit it, didn’t he? He’s hit it, didn’t he?” Warne said.
But Cooper was given out, and replays immediately showed umpire Tony Wilds had made an error, leaving the spin king fuming.
“OH MY GOODNESS! What is going on with this umpiring? Something has to be done, this is ridiculous,” he said on Fox Cricket.
“Just come on. Enough’s enough. Enough is enough. We’ve seen too much of this.
“If we want to take this competition seriously, we’ve got to have DRS. Cricket Australia just have to pay for it. We can’t have these decisions.”
The incident came just 24 hours after a similar howler in the Scorchers’ clash with the Thunder, when AJ Tye was left flabbergasted by claims Usman Khawaja’s bat had hit the ground - when it was some distance away from it - rather than nicked the ball.
But the combination of the two moments left Warne demanding change and the introduction of DRS to the competition.
“I feel for Tony, he’s just made a mistake, but we’ve seen too much of it. If we want this competition to be up there with the best competitions in the world, I’m sorry, but it’s not fair to us here at Fox, or at Channel Seven the rightsholders, to pay for DRS. It’s a Cricket Australia competition.
“We feel for these guys, it’s nothing personal against each of the umpires ... we know the umpiring position is such a tough job.
“But we just can’t have these decisions and mistakes. It’s human, we’re gonna make mistakes, but we need to have DRS.”
But as commentator Mark Howard pointed out, it’s not as if a complicated review system would be needed to fix incidents like this one.
“Even in that situation, without the DRS, the howler of a decision - we can have a bloke upstairs who looks at one replay and overturns it,” he said on Fox Cricket.
Brisbane ended up losing by two runs after a stellar innings from stand-in captain Jimmy Peirson.