Shadab Khan was left fuming after a DRS error hurt his Islamabad United side at a key juncture in their narrow defeat to Quetta Gladiators.
The incident took place today (Thursday, February 22) during the 11th over of the Pakistan Super League match when Quetta Gladiators were chasing 139. Aga Salman threw the ball to opposing captain Riley Rossow and the batsman took a shot, but Aleem Dar held up his finger in dissent.
Rossu checked the ball and ball tracking showed that the ball had clearly spun, hit outside the line and spun past the stumps. Dar, Salman and Shadab all got lost on the field but the decision stood. If the match had not continued, Quetta Gladiators would have finished with 82 wins and 5 losses. Instead, Rossu helped his team win by his three wickets, extending their unbeaten lead to his 34. He was named Player of the Game.
A closer look at the ball tracking animation revealed an error as the impact point used for the determination was far away from where the ball hit the pad. When Shadab spoke to Zainab Abbas after the match, he was furious at the apparent injustice. “I think it’s because of technology,” he said, according to a translation by the Pakistani news agency Grassroots Cricket. “I was shown the wrong ball. Small mistakes like this shouldn’t happen in a big tournament like this.”
Shadab Khan: “I think technology was at fault. A different ball was shown (on the ball tracker for the Rilee Rossouw review). These small mistakes shouldn’t be happening in such a big tournament.”#HBLPSL9 | #QGvIU pic.twitter.com/lc6eaYrKZD
– Grassroots Cricket (@grassrootscric) 22. February 2024
DRS has been in the spotlight in recent weeks with several controversial calls and fresh confirmed errors in the India-England series. After Zak Crawley was dismissed in the second innings against Rajkot, Ben Stokes was correctly given out despite a graphical error showing the expected trajectory of the ball missing the stumps. I received that guarantee. Stokes also sparked a debate over whether referees should be removed from games to create a “level playing field”.
However, in this case, the ball missed the stumps completely, so the umpire’s release would not have affected whether Rossow was called out.
