England were demolished in the first test by an Indian bowling attack which looked woeful on English pitches last summer. England crashed to a nine wicket defeat in a substandard performance but one major talking point to be taken from the game is the use or non-use of DRS.
India will not allow the Decision Review System to be used in their own country. This was showcased in the first test by the Indian’s over-appealing for any decision which was remotely close and also openly disagreeing with the umpires on the field as well as using obvious expressions to apply pressure on the umpires.
Two decisions immediately come to mind from the test – the dismissals of Samit Patel and Stuart Broad in England’s first innings. Both batsmen were given out LBW by the on field umpire but both dismissals looked, at a first glance, not out. Both decisions looked like they were going down the leg side, particularly the dismissal of Patel who had been picked specifically for his ability to play the Indian spinners.
It was shown through the use of hawk-eye that both decisions were probably the wrong ones as the ball was not going to go on and hit the stumps. These were key moments in the game and questions have to be asked, like with the furore which surrounds the use of goal line technology in football, why are India not being forced to implement DRS and therefore make the game fairer?
These wickets could have been game changing wickets – Samit Patel has been in tremendous form in the warm-up games and a decent score from him could have put in England in a much more positive position at the end of the first innings.
The dismissal of Patel could have an enormous effect of his England career – wrongly given out in only his second test, but no-one will remember the fact that he was wrongly dismissed in six or twelve months time, people will just look at the figures and the figures show that Samit Patel only scored ten runs which would seem to point to the fact that he had struggled in India. When in actual fact he was just extremely unlucky.
As for this test series England have to learn from the Indian’s and appeal more often as there is an off-chance that the umpire might just give a decision your way which would have been rebuked using the DRS system.