It was Australia vs West Indies today and all the cricket fans were sitting on the edges of their seats as the match continued. After many twists and turns, it finished in a 15 run victory for Australia.
It was not clear precisely how they had accomplished it in the moments after it was over since they were 79 for five in their innings and West Indies 190 for four in theirs, chasing 288. However, then there was a lot to chew over, fast bowling, masterly batting, wild six-hitting, some dropped slapstick catches, some unlikely ones retained, an amateur run-out. In a match, there was a lot of everything you’d want.
And also a little bit of what you wouldn’t. There were poor matches between the umpires, Chris Gaffaney, and Ruchira Palliyaguruge. Four choices on review were overturned by West Indies. Gayle flailed 14 runs off Pat Cummins in the next over, with fours through long-off, midwicket, and long-on, considering then that this was his fortunate day. And then he was given a third time by Gaffaney, lbw again to Mitchell Starc.
Gayle again asked for a review, but the footage showed the ball was just clipping the leg stump this time. But what it didn’t catch was that the earlier delivery was a no-ball, also by an enormous margin, so Gayle was supposed to have had a free-hit off the ball that took his wicket.
Cricket legend Michael Holding smashed the umpires against the West Indies in Australia’s tense World Cup clash, branding them “atrocious” and “weak” after several controversial calls to the men in charge before star all-rounder Carlos Brathwaite also took an angry swipe.
Brathwaite defined some of the decisions as “dodgy” and will certainly be fined for a Code of Conduct violation.
“I just think I’d like that for West Indies, we don’t have to use all our reviews and that some of the other teams get a chance to use theirs because every time we get hit on our pad the finger goes up,” the star said after their loss.
“When we hit the opposition on their pad, the finger stays down. So we have to use our reviews and it’s always missing, and then we have to use our reviews when we’re batting as well and it’s always clipping.”
“I’m not a technology person, I don’t know why that happens, I can just say what I have seen happen over the past few years.”
