The IPL Governing Council is planning to have an umpire assigned specifically to check “no balls” after a number of howlers in the past few seasons led to heightened concerns about quality of Indian match officials.
An extra TV official is set to be appointed to monitor no balls in the Indian Premier League (IPL) – a decision made to help reduce the errors made by on-field umpires.
The BCCI will test the concept either in the upcoming Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament or in the Ranji Trophy.
The ICC had earlier tried this system in 2016 during an ODI series between England and Pakistan.
During that series, the third umpire was tasked with calling no-balls and it ended up taking on an average of eight seconds between the foot landing and a call being made by the TV umpire. For tighter calls, it took even longer.
The ICC is also set to allow the the third umpire to adjudge no-balls in the upcoming limited-overs series.
In the 2019 IPL, Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni were irked by no-ball decisions that went against their respective teams.
During a game between Kohli’s Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians, the umpire had crucially overlooked a no-ball when Lasith Malinga delivered the final ball of the game.
While the delivery resulted in only a single, if it had been adjudged a no-ball, Malinga would’ve had to bowl a free-hit to AB de Villiers with five runs separating both teams.
Kohli later slammed the ‘ridiculous’ decision and wished ‘the umpires had their eyes open’ during the match.
