The last Ashes without referrals – a running tally of umpiring errors
 

and their impact on the series.

Hopefully at the end of the series we'll be able to tally them up and see whether having the referral system in place would have made a big difference. Hopefully this thread will be empty.

If it's anything like 2005, server may not be big enough

Thank God Symonds isn't in the Australia squad.

Dead-set, some people (mostly Australians... what a surprise 8-)) have a hell of an ability to hallucinate a universe of errors more than actually happened in 2005.

You could probably count the number of obvious mistakes on two hands. In five Tests, that makes a pretty damn good series of Umpiring.

So... before we get onto tallying the errors in 2009, shall we have some claims made about how many there were in 2005? And actually give them, rather than just say "there were loads".

Didn't Strauss have a series of shocking decisions in 2006/2007, along with Symonds having loads of let-offs?

It's only natural that you remember the opposition getting away with it and your own players getting hard done by.

However many errors there are or aren't there's no way we'll ever know whether having the referral system in place would've made the blindest bit of difference. All evidence so far has shown that there is no absolutely guarantee obvious errors will be overturned, never mind less obvious ones.

Not in this thread.

Reckon there will be approximately 7 obvious umpiring errors this series.

Why 7? Tis my favourite number :)

Not so. Under the new system obvious errors have almost always been corrected and that will improve further as time goes by.

And bitching at umpires has decreased markedly because (a) disgruntled players have to put up or shut up and (b) umpires whose decisions are upheld have their standing immediately reinforced, and the wind is taken from the sails of the complainants.

It's all good.

Yes Australia wouldn't have won at Adelaide without a shocking umpiring decision (or two?). Strauss IIRC just wasn't out.

The error would have been corrected on a referral. And the error itself probably originated in the pressure / intimidation which Shane Warne was so expert at applying to umpires and which will be greatly diminished under the new system.

Delete all these useless posts Gelman.

Not quite sure why my posts deserve to be slagged off like this.

Like the equally obvious non-edge from Brendon McCullum which was still not corrected under the referral nonsense was?

Yes that was an error. But it's wrong to suggest that that invalidates the whole system.

Didn't anybody tell you - if there's one single error made under the referral system then:

(a) it's the fault of the technology (not of course the fault of the video umpire who made the bad decision) and

(b) because there is an error, that means the whole system must be flawed and must be banished forever.

8-)