Salim, Aur Tum kuch kar bhi kya sakte the! (Salim, what else you could have done!)

Yesterday on NDTV, Nawaz Sharif drew a parallel between the situation in Pakistan and the historical drama Mugal-e-Azam.

Nawaz said when Salim and Akbar were standing face to face alone in the Emperor’s court, Salim mumbled ‘’Anarkali kaid kar li gayi aur mein kuch na kar saka (My beloved Anarkali was imprisoned (by my father) and I could not do anything). Akbar, the all powerful emperor, as a matter of fact, replied. ‘’Aur tum kar bhi kya sakte the (What else could you have done son).’’

After watching yesterday’s and today’s proceedings, Bucknor does remind one of Akbar and Salim reminds one of Kumble and the Indian team. Anarkali is India's quest for victory to level the series!

Despite all the criticism, today when Symonds was on 148 and there was another appeal for stumping, a rather close one, Bucknor chose not to refer the appeal to the third umpire.

While the commentary in Cricinfo said, he (Symonds) just appeared to have some part of his foot grounded behind the line (Note that Cricinfo, renowned the worldover for their tremendous commentary, wrote the word just in italics), another replay from stump vision during the lunch break clearly showed that Symonds' foot was not behind the line. Even if it had been, the matter would still have been too close for Bucknor to have decided himself.

Now, was Bucknor protecting the third umpire, or behaving like Emperor Akbar in Mughal-e-Azam, one will never know.

But one does know that yesterday on various channels, Headlines Today, Aajtak and NDTV, experts had clearly lambasted Bucknor and questioned his competence to umpire at this level.