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India team lodge official complaint against umpire Vineet Kulkarni

Umpire Vineet Kulkarni has earned the wrath of the nation, as well as the Indian team

The Indian cricket team have lodged a complaint against on-field umpire Vineet Kulkarni for incompetent supervision, implying that the 36-year-old umpire had a decisive part to play in the narrow losses in the ongoing series against South Africa, according to The Hindu.

Despite coming close twice, India are yet to beat the visitors – they lost the T20 series 0-2, and trail the ODI series 0-1.

India have cited four leg-before decisions in their complaint as proof of Kulkarni’s incompetence. Kulkarni, the Indians were convinced, let off Jean-Paul Duminy twice in the first T20 at Dharamshala and erred in judging Shikhar Dhawan out leg-before in the first ODI at Kanpur. They also felt Faf du Plessis had been lucky to survive Ravichandran Ashwin’s first ball to him early in the match.

“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.

The two teams have meanwhile reached the central Indian city of Indore, where they would be playing the second ODI of the series on Wednesday.

Vineet Kulkarni’s fate in social media, home umpires and DRS woes

Officiating his 7th T20 match, Kulkarni turned down Axar Patel’s appeals to get JP Duminy out when South Africa still needed 96 off 48 balls. Duminy got a further reprieve off Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s bowling, capitalising on his two extra lives to take his team home for a last-over victory.

In the Kanpur ODI too, Kulkarni was guilty of two errors which proved crucial in the 5-run loss for India. 

Kulkarni is one of the four Indian umpires in the ICC International Panel of Umpires, and has stood in 6 T20 and 17 ODI matches before this series since his umpiring debut in 2009.

With homegrown umpires being guilty of errors, it would perhaps be time for the Indian team to reconsider the use of the DRS. We have clearly come a long way from when an Indian umpire was seen raising his finger only to touch his hat so that Ajay Jadeja could continue batting.

Most of the nation has been coming down hard on the young umpire, but some have suggested he is bearing the brunt of the Indian team’s disappointing string of results:

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