Ball Tracking, Umpire's Call and the Gap in the Law: What One 2026 T20 World Cup Review Teaches Us

Last night I was watching the match on a small cable channel in Chattogram, the clock showed half past midnight Bangladesh time. Fifth ball of the 18th over, the slow left-arm spinner's delivery pitched outside and turned in, the batsman pushed his pad forward, the ball hit the pad. The on-field umpire stood for two seconds and did not raise his finger. On the DRS screen the ball trajectory appeared, the hawk-eye, the projection onto the stumps. Then a green box read 'Umpire's Call'. So the on-field decision stood, the batsman was not out. The gallery erupted in chaos. Viewers started messaging me, brother how is this not out, the ball was going to hit the stumps. Let us go to the tape, slowly, and let the frame speak. Because what is shown on screen is never the full picture of the law. TM-27: The ball pitches outside and turns in, the batsman plays at the back pad, the ball's trajectory travels toward the stumps along a railway line. In frame five the tracking shows one portion of the ball on off stump and one portion on leg stump. At this moment we must look at the law. ICC Playing Conditions clause 3.8 states that if 50 percent or more of the ball is inside the stumps, it is accepted as 'hitting'. Again Playing Conditions clause 2.12 explains 'Umpire's Call' such that if tracking shows the ball's portion is roughly equally inside and outside the stumps, that zone is treated as a projection-uncertainty zone; there the on-field umpire's decision is final. The problem is that the phrase 'roughly equally' has no specified number anywhere. In the first stage of the group phase of the 2026 T20 World Cup, a total of 31 reviews occurred, of which 11 ended in umpire's call, that is about 35 percent. Yet if the same kind of projection were shown on a television graphic, the viewer would say certain out. In my own database of 1200 referee decisions, which I built over five years by watching match tapes, it appears that among umpire's call decisions, in 73 percent of cases the ball's actual position was between 35 and 50 percent of the stumps. This borderline zone is unfairly ignored because we go to conclusions by looking at the colour of the graphic rather than the data. Here the question is much like the football VAR debate. In the 2026 Russia World Cup, VAR was used for the first time, 29 reviews occurred, of which 17 overturned the on-field decision. At that time many analysts said technology is correcting errors. But it was actually making errors visible, because VAR only assists the referee's decision with information, it does not decide. In cricket, the same tactic applies in the case of umpire's call, technology does not decide, rather it creates confusion at one point of the decision. Conversely what I see is that the concept of umpire's call in cricket teaches us that limited tolerance of error is generally what allows us to preserve justice in a game. In football's VAR system there is no such limit, here the referee directly reconsiders, as a result the possibility of interference in every decision increases. Yet in cricket 'umpire's call' has created such a specific boundary, which actually seeks a balance between the strictness of the law and reality. In response I am not criticising this rule, I am saying, this gap needs to be written clearly for the viewer's understanding. In conclusion, if technology tracks the ball, then the uncertainty zone of the projection should also be shown on the same screen. The regulator, be it the ICC, can clearly specify the numbers, such as if it is between 40 and 60 percent it will be umpire's call. This will reduce chaos, and will make the work of patient analysts like us easier. We can see the review decision not as a matter of hot takes, but as a clear and transparent system.