Umpires have form too

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The zombie ball was something that happened in a game a few years back where the obvious no ball was not given after a player was caught. The South African batters assumed the catch made the ball dead. But then, Ireland threw the ball back in for a run out as well. The ball was eventually given as a no ball, and the run out stood. It shouldn’t have.

But it was a weird moment, and because of that you could see why the umpires were briefly confused. But it was the wrong decision, so I contacted the ICC to ask about it, and was told, “We don’t talk about umpiring decisions”. 

The most famous one would be the 2019 World Cup when I was working for Cricinfo and the overthrows incident happened. I was commentating at the end of that game, so I didn't have the law book in front of me. But afterwards, I was contacted on Twitter by many umpires, saying something's gone wrong here. 

We looked up the laws and thought there's a mistake. Andrew Miller and me went to the ICC and said, “We think there was a mistake in the way that the overthrows were calculated". And they said, "Well, the game's over now”.

In cricket, we've gone from blaming the umpires for everything from the 1970s till the 1990s, to not being able to talk about them at all. As you would expect, both of these extremes make almost no sense. 

I was watching a women's Hundred game the other day, and there was a mistake by Nigel Llong. Towards the end of the game, the bowling team had a good chance of stealing a game that they probably should have lost.