VIDEO | Pat Cummins left in disbelief as ultra-edge shows spike despite ball not making contact with bat

VIDEO | Pat Cummins left in disbelief as ultra-edge shows spike despite ball not making contact with bat

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Two things in this Ashes have so far given us more talking points than anything else - Decision Review System (DRS) and umpiring. Once again, both came under the scanner today as Pat Cummins was ruled out by the third umpire under bizarre circumstances which might raise questions over ultra-edge.

The Ashes 2019 so far has followed a simple pattern - a bad umpiring decision which has in turn been overruled and corrected by the saving grace that is technology. The standards of umpiring didn't get any better today, as there were two big decisions  - that of David Warner and Usman Khawaja - which were overturned. 

While at one stage it looked like the Aussies would score well over 300, a middle-order collapse followed the gritty partnership of Marnus Labuchagne and Warner and thanks to the chaos that ensued post the partnership, Pat Cummins found himself batting in the middle in the final hour of the day. 

On the final ball of the 50th over, a fired-up Jofra Archer, who was looking for his maiden five-wicket haul in Test cricket, came steaming into bowl to Cummins. The Englishman bowled a good-length delivery around the fifth stump line, and the Australian, seeing the width on offer, went for a flashy cover drive. There was a faint noise as the ball passed his bat, and as the England players went up in unison, the umpire obliged and ruled the Australian out. However, a confident Cummins instantly went up for the review, giving away the impression that the ball missed his bat.

As everyone waited for ultra-edge with curiosity, the technology bizarrely showed a spike even before the ball reached Cummins' bat, and the spike lasted until it left his bat. To the naked eye, it seemed like there was daylight between bat and ball, but at the same time, there was a spike on ultra-edge, visibly leaving everyone confused. Due to the anomaly surrounding it, third umpire Kumar Dharmasena decided to stick to the on-field decision on grounds of there being not enough conclusive evidence to overturn it.

But as the umpire raised his finger, Cummins looked in utter shock and disbelief as he walked back to the pavilion, probably due to the fact that he did not hit the ball in the first place. Either way, the decision just goes on to prove that even with DRS, it's indeed impossible to get decisions 100% correct, and sadly, that's a fact that we've to accept and live with. 

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