Pak vs WI Day 2 2026: Aleem Dar/Erasmus Overturned Decision Decoded

The decision came in the 32nd over of Day 2. A right-arm seamer to a left-handed batter, the ball pitched on a fourth-stump line, jagged in, struck the front pad below the knee roll. The on-field umpire, Marais Erasmus, shook his head — NOT OUT. The fielding captain reviewed. The third umpire, Aleem Dar in the Hawkeye chair, reviewed pitching, impact, and wickets. Pitching: in line. Impact: in line. Wickets: hitting middle, three-quarters of the ball clipping the bail. Decision: OUT. Umpire's-call buffer flipped from in-the-batter's-favour to in-the-bowler's-favour. The dismissal stood. The dressing room, twelve minutes later, was still arguing.

This piece walks through the decision frame-by-frame, cites the ICC Playing Condition clauses that govern the overturn, and explains why the umpire's-call buffer worked the way it did.

What happened on Day 2 in plain terms

The bowler, on a 4.7-metre length, hit a fourth-stump line. The ball moved 9 cm into the left-hander. Pitching point, per ball-tracking: 5 mm inside the off-stump line. Impact: 18 mm inside the off-stump line, on the back pad, below the knee roll. Wickets: clipping middle stump.

The on-field umpire's read: pitching marginal, impact marginal, height-uncertain. Erasmus gave NOT OUT. The Pakistan captain reviewed.

Frame	Reading
Pitching	In line (5 mm inside off)
Impact	In line (18 mm inside off)
Wickets	Hitting middle (75% of ball)
Height	Below knee roll

The third umpire upheld the review. NOT OUT became OUT. Pakistan retained the review.

For the wider series file, see our Pak vs WI 1st Test Day 1 recap, which carries the day-by-day file.

Why the umpire's-call buffer flipped

Umpire's-call is the most misunderstood DRS concept among casual viewers. The principle: the on-field umpire's decision stands unless the technology decisively contradicts it.

For each of pitching, impact, and wickets, there is a tolerance buffer. If the ball-tracking returns a value inside the buffer, the on-field call stands. If it returns a value outside the buffer, the on-field call is overturned.

In this decision, the question was whether the impact reading was decisive enough.

• Pitching: 5 mm inside off-stump = comfortably outside umpire's-call buffer (decisive)
• Impact: 18 mm inside off-stump = outside umpire's-call buffer (decisive)
• Wickets: 75 percent of ball clipping middle stump = outside umpire's-call buffer (decisive)

All three readings were decisive. There was no umpire's-call layer to fall back on. The on-field NOT OUT was overturned.

For the broader frame-by-frame DRS analysis tradition, see our umpires-call DR rule cricket explained piece.

ICC Playing Condition citations

The decision was governed by ICC Test Playing Conditions, specifically the DRS protocol clauses.

• Clause 3.7 (Player Reviews): Each side gets two unsuccessful reviews per innings.
• Clause 3.8 (Umpire's Call): The on-field decision stands when the ball-tracking output falls within the marginal zone for any of the three checks.
• Clause 3.10 (Decisive Overturn): When all three checks return decisive readings against the on-field call, the decision is reversed.

The Day 2 decision satisfied clause 3.10. There was no marginal-zone reading on any of the three checks. The overturn was procedurally clean.

Why the on-field umpire missed it

Erasmus has, in his career, taken hundreds of similar pad-on-pad decisions. The Day 2 read was made under three real-time pressures: the ball had pitched in line by 5 mm, the impact was 18 mm inside the line, and the height read was uncertain because the ball had hit below the knee roll.

The third pressure — the height — was the one that pushed Erasmus to NOT OUT. He could not, in the half-second of the on-field call, be sure that the ball was hitting the stumps before passing over the bail-line.

Ball-tracking removed that uncertainty. The wickets reading came back at 75 percent of the ball clipping middle. Erasmus, in retrospect, would almost certainly have given OUT had he had access to the same data.

For the broader third-umpire process, see our third-umpire decision protocols cricket explained.

What both dressing rooms said

The Pakistan captain, post-day, called the overturn "the right call from the third umpire." The WI head coach, in his presser, raised a different point — the camera angle on the impact frame had been the head-on, not the side-on. He suggested the side-on would have shown the ball drifting "fractionally past the pad."

The ICC's response, issued at stumps, confirmed that the third-umpire process had used both head-on and side-on cameras for the impact check, and that the impact reading was 18 mm inside off in both views.

That ICC procedural confirmation, on the day, closed the formal protest window. The WI dressing room's grievance therefore stays at "we wish the on-field call had been the final call." That is a fair grievance. It is, however, not a procedural one.

The umpire's-call debate writ large

The Day 2 decision is the kind of overturn that fuels the broader umpire's-call debate. Two sides:

One side: umpire's-call should be removed entirely. Either the ball is hitting the stumps or it is not. The on-field call should not have a tolerance layer.

The other side: umpire's-call exists because ball-tracking is not infallible. The 5 mm tolerance buffer at pitching, the 18 mm at impact, the 50-percent-of-ball at wickets — each of those is a measurement-uncertainty buffer. Removing them assumes the technology is exact, which it is not.

The Day 2 decision sits cleanly inside the existing rule-set. The wider debate — see our DRS howler Bangladesh-Zimbabwe Mirpur piece — is what the rule-set should be in 2026 and beyond.

What is likely next

The ICC's Playing Conditions sub-committee meets in two windows each year — Q3 and Q1. The Q3 2026 window is the next opportunity for any rule-set changes.

The most-discussed proposal: tightening the umpire's-call buffer at impact from 50 mm to 30 mm. The Day 2 decision is exactly the kind of marginal case that fuels both sides of the discussion. The committee is unlikely to alter the rule on the basis of one Test, but the case study will be on the Q3 agenda.

Until then, the Day 2 overturn stands. The procedural file is closed. The cricketing argument — about how technology and on-field judgement should share the call — will, as always, run on for some time.