The Indian team management has lodged a complaint against umpire Vineet Kulkarni for what the home team feels is incompetent supervision.
It has cited four decisions, all leg-before shouts from the ongoing series against South Africa, to make its point.
Kulkarni, the Indians were convinced, let off Jean-Paul Duminy twice in the first T20 at Dharamshala and erred in judging Shikhar Dhawan leg-before in the first ODI at Kanpur.
It also did not appreciate Faf du Plessis surviving first ball from R. Ashwin early in the match.
Standing in his seventh T20 match, Kulkarni turned down left-arm spinner Axar Patel’s appeal for leg-before when Duminy was on five with South Africa needing 96 runs off 48 balls.
Later, when Duminy was on 33 and South Africa needed 43 off 23 balls, Kulkarni signalled two leg-byes even as Bhuvneshwar Kumar vehemently appealed when the South African left-hander missed an intended flick. With two ‘lives’, Duminy pulled off a dramatic last-over victory for South Africa.
“We did not have quite a few decisions going our way and sometimes these can change the match. It could have been different if we could have got Duminy out early,” bemoaned India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni after the defeat.
At Kanpur, the Indians were livid when Kulkarni, in his 18th ODI match since debut in 2009, upheld Morne Morkel’s leg-before shout against Shikhar Dhawan, who was in firm control as India attempted to chase 304 to win.
The Indians were upset at the umpire giving the batsman out despite Morkel coming round the wicket. The Indians believed that they had du Plessis first ball. India lost by five runs to trail 0-1 in the five-match series.
The BCCI, which is opposed to the Decision Review System (DRS), would now be under pressure to have a rethink following such incidents when its team ends up a loser due to errors by home umpires.
