“100%. There’s no denying it, 100%,” Smith told Fox Sports during the lunch break, when asked if he got his hands on the ball. “But the umpire has made a decision. We will go ahead.”
The incident occurred in the eighth over after India had elected to bat in Sydney, the first ball Kohli faced. He lent to Scott Boland at second slip, where Smith dived low to his right and appeared to catch the ball close to the ground before flicking it in the air towards gully, where Marnus Labuschagne completed the catch. The on-field umpires referred the catch to TV umpire Joel Wilson, who ultimately judged that the ball had touched the ground just before Smith scooped it in the air towards Labuschagne.
Speaking to Channel 7, former ICC umpire Simon Tafel said, “He must have understood what the third umpire did there.”
“I think you described it very well when you said that depending on which side of the fence you’re sitting on, you can probably make a case for any decision,” Tafel said. “Listening to Joel Wilson there, where he said the fingers were under the ball and then he saw it roll to the ground, in his own words he’s telling us that he believed he saw that ball on the ground.
“So, here’s the TV umpire looking for two things. One is the finger under the ball. There he was satisfied. But then he believed through those pictures that he clearly saw the ball on the ground. And here’s the challenge, slow it down with slow-mo and it Looks pretty good. I certainly understand that he saw the ball on the ground and the way he saw it is usually ICC protocol if you see fingers under the ball, but here’s the problem: the on-field umpire no longer gets the soft signal and makes the decision, it’s now purely televised. In the hands of the umpire.”
After surviving that close call off the first ball, Kohli was unbeaten on 12 off 48 balls at lunch on the first day of the fifth Test in Sydney, where India were 57 for 3 in a match to win the series and hold on to the boundary. Will be the Gavaskar Trophy.
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