West Indies allrounder Carlos Brathwaite has expressed his frustration at "dodgy" umpiring during the 15-run loss to Australia and questioned why his team does not get as many lbw decisions as its rivals.
West Indies overturned four calls by the two umpires in Thursday’s match at Trent Bridge, including two in three balls against Chris Gayle in the third over of the innings by Mitchell Starc.
The ball that trapped Gayle lbw in the following over from Starc should have been a free hit because of a no-ball by the Australia paceman the previous delivery that umpire Chris Gaffaney missed.
"I don't know if I'll be fined for saying it," Brathwaite said, "but I just think that the umpiring was a bit frustrating. Even when we were bowling, we thought a few balls close to head height were called wides.
“And obviously three decisions ... as far as I can remember being dodgy, it was frustrating and sent ripples through the dressing room. To lose Chris in a chase of 280, who can probably get 180 of them himself obviously, broke the start that we wanted to have.”Carlos Brathwaite
“But the umpires do their job. They try to do it to the best of their ability, we as players go out there to do our job as well," added Brathwaite.
Brathwaite then delivered a cutting assessment of officiating in general.
“I just think that for West Indies, we don’t have to use all our reviews and that some of the other teams get a chance to use theirs because every time we get hit on our pad, the finger goes up. When we hit the opposition on their pad, the finger stays down.”Carlos Brathwaite
"So we have to use our reviews and it's always missing and then we have to use our reviews when we're batting as well and it's always clipping. I'm not a technology person, I don't know why that happens. I can just say what I have seen happen over the past few years," said Brathwaite.
Brathwaite said the removal of Gayle for 21 wasn't the sole reason for West Indies failing to chase down Australia's total of 288, but it didn't help.
“We had eight other wickets after that and it was incumbent on us to go out there and deliver a performance which we didn’t for whatever reasons, We will discuss and try to rectify for the next game.”Carlos Brathwaite
"Did it hamper the start? It definitely did but it didn't cost us the game," concluded Brathwaite.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)