Cricket

And we have our first contentious catch call in the post-soft-signal era. Firstly, amid all the mayhem that might even be called Bazball, Scott Boland has produced a beauty. It is on a length, outside off, kicks at Shubman Gill, leaves him, takes the edge even as Gill takes the bottom hand off. There is a gap between second slip and gully where the ball is dying until Cameron Green gets left mitt out. He claims it and celebrates immediately. Gill is of course not walking. The decision is sent to the third umpire without any soft signal because it has been abolished. I don't think Richard Kettleborough, the third umpire, has been given any conclusive evidence because we sort of lose a frame between Green catching with his fingers underneath the ball and then throwing the ball up in celebration. Does the ball in that frame - as he rolled his hand over - touch the grass? The other possibility is that you can have your fingers under the ball, and it can still touch the grass. Kettleborough is satisfied it doesn't. Gill is shaking his head, Australia are celebrating, the crowd is booing along with cries of "cheat". And it is also tea, and Rohit Sharma, the unbeaten batter, is having to drag himself off. He is disappointed too. In the end, though, the umpire hasn't seen the ball hit the grass. In his expert opinion it is out. We have to move on. And also mourn the abolition of the soft signal because this is where the expertise of the on-field umpires also helps make the decision.