Marsh plays Captain Cool as team’s tempers fray
With a gentle raise of the arm, Mitch Marsh passed his first major test as Australian captain.
It wasn’t a powerful drive or crafty outswing, or even a shrewd bowling or field change.
No, Marsh deserves credit for defusing what was threatening to become a particularly ugly and potentially costly episode late in Australia’s Twenty20 win over the West Indies on Sunday night at Adelaide Oval.
Marsh was the only protagonist to come out of the incident with his reputation enhanced. It was cricket at its most absurdly arcane.
Windies tailender Alzarri Joseph had been caught short at the non-striker’s end when Aussie paceman Spencer Johnson whipped off the bails, except Johnson didn’t realise that Joseph hadn’t made his ground.
So he didn’t appeal.
It wasn’t until a replay was shown on the Adelaide Oval big screen that the Aussies as a collective realised it should have been a run out.
Umpire Gerard Abood, a veteran of the Australian domestic scene, stressed that since the Aussies hadn’t appealed,
Joseph had survived and the match was not over.
Under Law 31.1 of the MCC’s Laws of Cricket, Abood was right in saying that he couldn’t dismiss a batter without an appeal.
Tim David, who had been fielding at deep point, said he had appealed and passionately made his point to Abood. In any case, under Law 31.3 the Aussies could still have appealed legally before Johnson began his run-up for the next ball. It is unclear from television replays whether Johnson had started his run-up before the Aussies started celebrating following the replay on the big screen.
Either way, Abood could have consulted with the third umpire to check if the Aussies had appealed.
That Abood was hearing a protective helmet, potentially limiting his ability to hear an appeal from the outfield, muddied the waters.
Abood was terse in his exchanges with the Aussies and even if he was on solid ground could have done more to douse the flames.
David should be taken at his word that he appealed but he carried on unreasonably. Suggesting to Abood that the situation was a “joke” was not a good look and it took the intervention of Marsh’s arm to get the middle-order blaster to back down.
Highly experienced pair Josh Hazlewood and Marcus Stoinis also remonstrated, which prompted Abood to say in a message picked up by the stump mic: “Guys we’re getting into really poor territory. Get on with the game.”
Then David Warner, who is rarely short of a word, could be heard saying: “He’s backed himself to not give it out, that’s the issue. It’s umpire error.”
Warner, who in October called for greater umpire accountability, should consult the rule book because without an appeal Abood would have erred in giving Joseph out.