England will have a player review reinstated after a technology failure was acknowledged in the controversial Alex Carey dismissal that never was on the opening day of the Adelaide Test.
ESPNcricinfo understands that England head coach Brendon McCullum and team manager Wayne Bentley met match referee Jeff Crowe after stumps to formally raise their concerns. The England and Wales Cricket Board is also expected to push the ICC to reassess its systems, with a view to tightening decision-making processes around edge-detection technology.
The flashpoint came when Carey, on 72, slashed at a Josh Tongue delivery outside off stump. Despite a visible spike appearing on the Real-Time Snickometer (RTS) several frames before the ball passed the bat, third umpire Chris Gaffaney upheld on-field umpire Ahsan Raza’s “not out” call. “There’s a clear gap, no spike,” Gaffaney said at the time.
Carey went on to make England pay, eventually scoring 106. Speaking after play, he admitted he believed he had hit the ball, conceding he had “a bit of luck” and adding that he was “clearly not” a walker. Soon after, BBG Sports, the supplier of RTS, confirmed that an operator error may have been to blame, revealing that the “incorrect stump mic” had been selected for audio processing. The company accepted “full responsibility for the error”.
England’s frustration has been simmering beneath the surface throughout the series. Bowling coach David Saker said the dressing room had lingering doubts about the reliability of RTS. “We shouldn’t be talking about this after a day’s play,” Saker said. “In this day and age, you’d think the technology is good enough to pick things up like that.”
Under the ICC’s playing conditions, a review can be reinstated at the match referee’s discretion if it “could not properly be concluded due to a failure of the technology”. There is precedent: during England’s tour of India in early 2021, a similar failure led to a review being restored after Ajinkya Rahane was wrongly given not out in Chennai.
Crowe’s ruling means England will begin day two with both reviews intact as Australia resume on 326 for 8. While the decision offers some procedural relief, it does little to erase the damage, with Carey adding 34 runs after the missed call.
The episode has also reignited debate around edge-detection systems. The ICC currently approves two sound-based technologies: RTS, used in Australia, and UltraEdge, deployed elsewhere. Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting was blunt in his assessment, suggesting RTS lags behind its rival.
“This technology that we’re using here is simply not as good as what’s used in other countries,” Ponting said on Channel 7. “The umpires will tell you the same thing — they can’t trust it. That can’t happen. You’ve got to be able to trust the technology that’s in place.”
The ICC declined to comment on the incident, but the fallout from Adelaide is likely to intensify scrutiny on how cricket’s decision-review technology is operated — and how much faith players and officials can reasonably place in it.
