'Unfortunate' That Neutral Umpires Can't Travel For Tests: Jasprit Bumrah

Indian fast bowling spearhead Jasprit Bumrah has said that it is ‘unfortunate’ that neutral umpires cannot travel for Tests in the post-covid era in the wake of the controversy surrounding 3rd umpire Paul Wilson’s questionable call to give the Australian captain Tim Paine not-out.

It all happened during the 55th over of the Australian innings when Paine and Cameron Green got involved in a horrible mixup resulting in the former struggling to make it back to the striker’s end.

While one replay showed that Paine’s bat was on the popping crease, the other one showed that the Australian captain might have just slid his bat over the line. However, Paul Wilson said that there was no conclusive evidence to suggest that Tim Paine was on the ‘wrong side’ of the line and ruled him not out.

The Indians, who were seeing the replay on the giant screen, were clearly not happy, and neither were fans and former cricketers like Shane Warne, Aakash Chopra, who expressed their displeasure on Twitter.

While Bumrah indirectly agreed with West Indies Test skipper Jason Holder’s statement that if the players can travel amid all restrictions, why can’t the neutral umpires, he quickly added that such thing are not in anyone’s control and he and the team are focussed on taking care of the controllable.

“Look, these are the things that we can’t control. I understand that the situations are difficult and all of these things are out of our hands. I try to not focus on things that we can’t control but yeah it is unfortunate that the umpires are not allowed to travel. But it is something that I don’t have any power of changing. We try to focus on things that we can change. That is the only thing our team is focusing on. If a decision goes our way or if it doesn’t, we have to look forward and we focus on the next ball.” Jasprit Bumrah was quoted as saying by ESPNCricinfo.

Last month, Jason Holder had raised the issue after Windies white-ball skipper Kieron Pollard had expressed his displeasure at a few dodgy decisions in the T20I series against New Zealand.

“The umpiring, Polly [Pollard] for sure had a few question marks over the umpiring in the T20 series. But look, I try to be as far down the line. What I would say about the umpiring, or the situation of the umpires, is that if we can travel and do a quarantine, I don’t see why an opposing (overseas) umpire can’t travel and do the quarantine,” Jason Holder had said at the end of the tour.

Also Read- Very Surprised That Tim Paine Survived That Run Out- Cricket Fraternity Split Over The Controversial Decision