There is nothing in the ICC DRS document about the salience of the middle-stump. With regard to determining whether the ball was likely to have hit the stumps, the evidence by way of technology should show that "the centre of the ball would have hit the stumps within an area demarcated by a line drawn below the lower edge of the bails and down the middle of the outer stumps." (3.3.i(iii)). The clause further goes on to say that
However, in instances where the evidence shows that the ball would have hit the stumps within the demarcated area as set out above but that the point of impact is greater than 250 cm from the stumps, the third umpire shall notify the on-field umpire of:The original rule says nothing at all about any requirement that the ball should have hit the middle stump. The Hindu's report, like a lot of the earlier ones, does not cite a source - either a named ICC official, or a document, to support its claim. My understanding of the 2.5m rule has been based on the wording of Clause 3.3 i(iii). This was why it made sense to compare the two dismissal's Bell's v India and Watson's v Zimbabwe to demonstrate how "normal cricketing principles" might be applied.
a) The distance from the wickets to the point of impact with the batsman
b) The approximate distance from point of pitching to point of impact
c) Where the ball is predicted to hit the stumps.
In such a case, the on-field umpire shall have regard to the normal cricketing principles concerning the level of certainty in making his decision as to whether to change his decision
Sharda Ugra reports on Cricinfo that the ICC has made a small but significant alteration to Clause 3.3. The ICC's spokesperson called it a change of "protocol" (whatever that means). She then goes on to repeat the old story that "The previous rule required that the leg-before could be reversed - by the on-field umpire - only if the replay showed that the ball was hitting the middle stump dead centre."
The previous rule, as written and as published by the ICC, required no such thing. It required proper regard for "normal cricketing principles".
The ICC's revision of the rule is being reported as a relaxation of the rules - the shift, according to Cricinfo (and The Hindu), is from a much stricter requirement that the ball be shown to be heading to middle-stump from 2.5m out, to one which is more generous to the bowling side where all that is required is that the ball hit some part of middle-stump - this means that any ball that does not hit the off or leg stump flush, but hits the inside of off-stump or leg-stump, would allow the Umpires to reverse an initial not out decision.
In fact, if you read the original rule, what has happened with the new language for 3.3-i(iii), which, as reported by Sharda Ugra on Cricinfo is as follows - "the evidence provided by technology should show that the centre of the ball would have hit the stumps on any part of the middle stump", is a severe curtailment of the Umpire's judgment. "Normal Cricketing Principles" have been replaced by a strictly empirical standard - "the centre of the ball would have hit the stumps on any part of the middle stump".
What this means, is that the agency of Umpire Kettleborough, who reversed his original Not Out decision on seeing the new evidence, and the agency of the more conservative Umpire Bowden, who did not reverse his original Not Out decision on seeing the new evidence, is significantly diminished. Neither of those decisions (with DRS, or, in my opinion despite DRS) was wrong. They were both classic 50-50 calls. The change in the rule manufactures a new certainty, to go with that manufactured by Hawkeye. In doing so, it shifts uncertainty elsewhere.
Can it be argued for example, that a ball pitching on leg stump and spinning towards off, but grazing the middle stump on the way (or hitting the inside of off stump and then going on to hit middle stump, something that would happen nearly instantaneously in real life, but possibly not in Hawkeye's fantasy world), should be read similarly, margin-of-error wise, to a ball which pitches just outside off stump and heads in towards off-and-middle and gets more off than middle? Will the ICC introduce a further caveat the next time a high profile dismissal goes against a powerful team which takes into account where the ball pitches, and which way it is heading?
How did this come about? This in itself is intriguing. After the Bell LBW happened, we read the story of the middle stump rule in the press - a rule, which as far as I can tell, did not exist. Why was it such a problem to say that it was the Umpire's decision in Bell's case, and that it was not wrong on the merits? That the technological apparatus was not good enough? Because according to the ICC's own DRS rule book, it wasn't good enough. The rule book recommended a return to "normal cricketing principles". Would the ICC have had a similar reaction if it had been Sachin Tendulkar or Virender Sehwag being given Out LBW from over 2.5m out? What would the rule have been changed to then? That the centre of the ball must be exactly congruent to the middle of middle stump at least 1/2 stump height downwards from the top of the bail?
The original middle-stump rule remains a mystery to me. Hopefully, I will be able to learn something about its origins in the coming week.
But the ICCs decision can be seen only as an attempt to demolish whatever little scope for judgment the Umpires had in a review. This episode confirms my long time hunch, that the ICC has no interest in getting a decision right - that it seeks to shift the responsibility of reviewing the Umpires decision from the Umpire, to a system in which the truth (the "correct" decision) is manufactured such that it can be demonstrated. It is manufactured based on a set of arbitrary standards, which are then used to demonstrate it (as the new ICC DRS 2.5m rule demonstrates so clearly). Unfortunately, as the ICC has discovered in this episode, and will continue to demonstrate in subsequent episodes, manufacturing certainty is futile in the face of critical scrutiny of these arbitrary standards and their origins. It is uncertainty all the way down.
What we'll get is the continual modification of this DRS system - modifications which will have a purely accidental history that derives from the identity of the team that gets hurt by a perceived injustice thanks to DRS, a press that is willing to play up this perceived injustice and manufacture other certainties in order to do so (the middle stump rule) and anybody else who has the power to influence how certainty will be manufactured.
All this, because the ICC is unwilling to admit that the LBW can produce 50-50 situations a lot of the time, and that these are best left to an expert, who, through experience has worked out a way to adjudicate on the 50-50 situations with consistency. The DRS was invented to correct situations in which obvious mistakes that come in the way of this consistency are done away with. Instead, we have marginality (and the Umpire along with it) in the dock.