From the horse's mouth

The man....Steve Bucknor himself...now heard from. Voices his concerns on quite a few issues, including the new right-to-appeal, for which his major complain is that the ICC did not consult the umpires. Fair enough, they should have been consulted on how to best formulate the rule. But I'm not sure if the players were consulted either..and they are surely the more important of the the two parties directly affected by the ruling.

His second point of contention...that t.v. companies (producing the coverage) are biased in their choice of images (replays etc) to be displayed to viewers, and even third umpires, trying to make the 'home' players look good. Well...that is indeed a big charge...one that is not outside the realm of possibility. Remember how Atherton recently accused BCCI of trying to curb the Ganguly issue from being discussed on air....or remember how we never ever saw the new 2000 frame super-slow-mo of Shoaib bowling in the Pak series....ofcourse none of these are confirmed....but we know there is enough scope for manoeuvring. Especially when production companies like Nimbus have so much to gain from toeing the BCCI lines, why would they care about transparency or neutrality or other such sentiments, unless forced to?

But, in the end, despite all those issues...I've seen enough blunders from Bucknor, and not only blunders but his visible show of contempt for players and their rightful requests, to not have even a shred of sympathy with him. Sure the technology is making umpires look bad, but when a commentator sitting that far away from action is able to cofidently make a call pointing out umpire's mistake (in real time, before the replays have been aired), then we know who's to blame...right?