Umpire for no-ball will work well, says Harsha Bhogle

Ever since Sourav Ganguly was elected as the president of the BCCI, he has put forward one new proposal after another. Under his initiative, India will play their first-ever day-night Test match on Friday, against Bangladesh. Another prospect that the former India captain has suggested is the use of a dedicated fourth umpire to check no-balls come the next season of the IPL — and Bhogle agrees, to the principle, at least.

“There’s some cricketing issues that he (Ganguly) has brought up that are worthy of a debate. One of those is that we have an additional umpire merely to check no-balls, especially in T20 cricket, where the implications of a wrong no-ball call can be immense. Maybe, for all these years, people were bowling no-balls and we just weren’t checking them. As soon as we had the replays, we discovered that the umpire’s job was very difficult,” Bhogle said in a video shared by Cricbuzz.

“My thought is that we don’t need an extra umpire for that because the third umpire doesn’t have a lot to do anyway. The third umpire, along with a technician, will know in two or three seconds whether or not it is a no-ball, and we’re up and running,” Bhogle added.

The 58-year-old further noted that the issue has surfaced more because the umpires had begun erring on the side of the video replays confirming the decision for them.