By The Bug’s resident cricket writer and tragic.

In my playing days, the notion that the batsman always got the benefit of the doubt was the key to my success as an opening bat.

Only joking, of course. I’d like a dollar for every time I was given out LBW when if Blind Freddy had been officiating at the bowler’s end he would have seen that the ball would have clearly missed leg stump! It would have knocked the middle peg out of the ground but that’s not important right now.

I remember walking off once at Marchant Park in Chermside and angrily showing my teammates the clearly visible bruise that was rapidly growing on my upper arm – a mark that the ball left as it went through to the keeper. Sure, the ball may have also clipped the bat and glove on the way through, but that’s not important right now.

The point I’m making is that I’ve got no idea really how far I could have gone in this game – if countless umpires had had the decency to give me the benefit of the doubt. Just one chance at A grade in Brisbane and who knows where my signature shot – the snick drive – could have taken me. Shield, maybe? Tests?

And what harm would it have done anyway if an early appeal had been turned down? I very rarely lasted the first over anyway.

So, let’s move on to the supposedly controversial third-umpire decision at the SCG yesterday. At the risk of upsetting my loyal reader, the DRS ump Joel Wilson got that Smith/Labuschagne “catch” perfectly right.

He thought the ball touched the ground, as do I, so that’s really the end of the matter. Not out.

The thoughts of some of the game’s greats are telling in this regard.

Even Punter Ponting in declaring it a fair catch on Seven’s Test broadcast agreed the ball “had touched the grass”. End of discussion really.

Ponting, Mark Waugh and Justin Langer all argued that Smith’s fingers were always under the ball and he wouldn’t have been able to flick the ball up if that hadn’t been the case. All reasonable and forensic assessments except for one thing: the third umpire – as do I – believed the ball also touched the ground whether Smith had control of it or not or where his fingers were. End of the matter, really.

Even former Test umpire Simon Taufel said he could see why the third umpire had come to his not-out decision.

“You could probably build a case for either decision to be given,” he was reported as saying.

Oh, then! A fifty-fifty, perhaps? In which case the batsman deserved to be given the benefit of the doubt, even though I think Virat Kohli has turned into a bit of a cunt in old age.

Don Gordon-Brown

PS: I developed my deep love of cricket even before I realised that not only did I and Bradman share a first name but also our initials – DGB! And like Bradman, I could score effortlessly and mistake free all day for my team without once having to use a rubber! An old joke I haven’t used for decades but fuck it. Why not! Who’s to stop me?

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