Windies fuming at umpires’ calls

AUSTRALIA V WEST INDIES

MATCH 10, TRENT BRIDGE CARLOS Brathwaite happily risked the threat of a fine from the ICC to slam the World Cup umpires after the West Indies exposed several poor decisions with a record five DRS referrals against Australia.

Former West Indies great Michael Holding accused the “atrocious” umpires of getting sucked in to Australia’s drawn-out appeals while ex-batting star Matthew Hayden said it was time to bring in technology to ping bowlers who overstep.

Brathwaite said there was a worrying trend of “dodgy” decisions against his team, particularly on lbw calls.

“Every time we get hit on our pad the finger goes up. When we hit the opposition on their pad, the finger stays down,” he said.

“I don't know if I’ll be fined for saying it, but I just think that the umpiring was a bit frustrating.

“When we were bowling we thought a few balls close to head height were called wides.”

The Windies sent down 24 wides in the 15-run loss while Chris Gayle was given out three times in four balls against Mitchell Starc.

Gayle reviewed all three decisions. The first two were overturned but the third stood, because the tight lbw decision was deemed the umpire’s call.

If Kiwi umpire Chris Gaffaney’s on-field call was not out then Gayle would have been safe regardless of whether Starc reviewed.

However that ball should have been a free hit for Gayle after Starc got away with a huge front-foot noball on the previous delivery.

“I'm normally pretty close, and I've actually been a fair way back for the last few weeks,” Starc said. “I got away with that one, fortunately.” Brathwaite was fuming. “Three decisions [against Gayle] … it was frustrating and sent ripples through the dressing room,” he said.

“To lose Chris in a chase of 280, who can probably get 180 of them himself obviously, broke the start that we wanted to have.”

Captain Jason Holder then successfully challenged lbw shouts by Glenn Maxwell and Adam Zampa that were incorrectly given out.

“I think I'll just say I just found ourselves a bit unlucky to be on the other end of all the decisions,” Holder said.

“It’s just ironic. I don't even know what to say about it, but it is a funny situation where all of them went against us.”

Holding said in his day you were only allowed one appeal. “You don’t appeal two, three, four times to the umpire. They are being intimidated which means they’re weak,” he said.