When Muthiah Muralitharan was asked about the two referrals going his way in the second innings, he was glad to answer but wanted a minor correction in the question. “You can’t say that the decisions went my way, the batsmen were out,” he said. After that, he reeled off numerous advantages of the review system that he thought made the game fair — less pressure on umpires, no excuses for players and little to talk about for the television experts to name a few. But he missed out on mentioning the biggest advantage he and his team will have because of the referral system in the rest of the series, and later too if this umpiring initiative survives the experimental phase. With Murali and his new spin partner Ajantha Mendis banking on subtle variation of spin, where close bat-pad and lbw calls are an every-over affair, the third umpire’s intervention is a welcome change for the Lankans. With most umpires opting to give the batsmen the benefit of doubt, Murali and Mendis feel they have better chance when the action is re-assessed with the help of frame-by-frame replays. That is what exactly happened on Saturday as three star Indian batsmen, who were initially given not out, were asked to take the walk back to the pavilion after Sri Lankan skipper Mahela Jayawardene signalled ‘T’ with his hands. Virender Sehwag was lbw after he was hit on the front pad by the Murali top-spinner. The naked eye didn’t notice the top of the bat edge that Tendulkar got off Murali but the replays conclusively proved it. Same was true when Dravid was out bat and pad to Mendis. Minutes before Murali had supported the referral system, Indian skipper Anil Kumble didn’t seem quite convinced with it. “It is a bit too early to comment. We will have to sit and work out on how technology will help. A couple of calls were negated. This is something that we will have to take forward,” said Kumble.Like Murali, Jayawardene, too, supported the system. “If it wasn’t there, we probably would have had four decisions going against us in this match. We managed to turn it around. Sachin and Rahul’s decisions were both tough ones for the umpires, especially when you have bowlers like Murali and Ajantha going at the batsmen on this kind of tracks. It is not easy. They just needed that extra bit of help. I am all for it, not just because most of the referrals went our way, but it’s just that they were obvious mistakes, (and) we managed to rectify them,” he said.
