What was going through the minds of the umpires as the match between Australia and England reached its conclusion? All of a sudden there was a lot happening at once. Josh Hazlewood was bowling right-arm over the wicket and getting a hint of reverse swing. Aleem Dar, the umpire, watched the front crease for the no ball. Then, in a fraction of a second, he had to readjust to see where the ball pitched, before adjusting once more to what happened after that.

What happened was that the ball was full – near yorker length – shaped in and almost knocked James Taylor’s feet from under him. At first sight it looked out. And this is how Dar called it. Game over.

But a second look, which Dar did not get, showed that the ball might have been sliding down the leg side. Anyway, with a review left and nothing to lose by using it, Taylor requested it. The decision review system overruled Dar, and Taylor, with the last man at the crease, was reprieved.

But now another element emerged. The batsmen had set off on a leg-bye, with the pair almost crossing as Taylor was given out. Glenn Maxwell collected the ball and threw down the stumps with Jimmy Anderson, perhaps aware from the crowd roar that the game was over, throttling back and short of his ground.

Here came the controversy: the umpires called for a replay of this second incident and, after considerable consultation between on-field officials and the third umpire, Anderson was deemed run out, leaving Taylor not out on 98.

The question to ask is how could three of the world’s elite umpires in Dar, Kumar Dharmasena and the third umpire, Billy Bowden; a fourth umpire in the Trinidadian Joel Wilson; the umpires’ coach Simon Taufel sitting in the box with Bowden; as well as the experienced match referee Jeff Crowe, who is not expected to know the laws of the game inside out but might reasonably have smelt a rat, between them get a decision so utterly wrong? What possessed them in the four minutes it took to declare Anderson run out? These are the top officials. In his time as an elite umpire, Taufel was top of the list six years in a row, and Dar has been three times. The protocol is abundantly clear: once a decision has been made, irrespective of whether it gets overturned (and this decision was made before Maxwell broke the stumps), the ball becomes dead.

Taylor, visibly, was pointing this out. The repercussions as far as the result was concerned were minor beyond a possible hundred for Taylor, and the further small chance of it adversely affecting England’s net run-rate should qualification come down to that. But imagine if it had been a tight match. Imagine if it had been the final. Dharmasena alone went to the England dressing room after the game to apologise.

Perhaps, with so much happening all at once, the answer is that the umpires’ collective lost the ability to think clearly. Did their thinking go from blue to red and not go back to blue again? This needs some explaining.

In Sydney, before England’s first warm-up match, all officials attended a special seminar conducted by the behavioural strategist Warren Kennaugh, who has worked within a whole range of businesses, sports and organisations, including Cricket Australia. His website gives a brief summary of what he is trying to achieve within sport: “Professional teams and elite individuals are constantly looking for the edge in exceptional performance. Understanding team dynamics, game momentum shifts and individual derailers can appear simple but getting the right action at the right time separates the elite from others.”

So for the ICC seminar, Kennaugh broke the match mental-state down into blue and red categories. There is a broader explanation of this. Blue thinking, he says, involves being in the “here and now”. It is neither past nor future focused; it involves being “in the zone”. For red thinking Kennaugh lists: less aware of what is going on around you, in other words out of the here and now.

“With any elite athlete,” says Kennaugh, “it’s important for them to know how they prepare and get themselves in the blue so that they can perform at their best. Conversely it’s also important they understand what do they do when in the red, what triggers them from blue to red and how to refocus from red to blue in match conditions. Each athlete is different in his preparation, approach, experience, triggers and recovery methods. The top athletes have an intuitive knowing of these two states and good knowledge of their processes.”

I asked a current elite umpire, who would prefer not to be named, whether he found the seminar helpful and his response was extremely positive. “The biggest issue for us as umpires now is that we are challenged for everything, which is a world away from the days when the umpire’s decision was final,” he said. “It is getting to the point where the new generation of cricketers have a lack of respect for umpires. So the game becomes a challenge for us. What Warren gave me was a different perspective on how I controlled a game and myself. It was an idea of how any mood swings that I might have affected colleagues and the game itself. I understood how I could slip from the blue into the red, but as importantly, it gave me a strategy for getting back into the blue.

“Suppose the Anderson decision had not ended the game and another lbw decision had to be made next ball? Would I have been back in the blue to make a proper dispassionate decision or would I still be thinking about the previous one? With Warren’s help I think I would have been able to clear my mind.”

The rationale, then, behind the potentially calamitous decision at the MCG was that everything had gone smoothly, the game was drawing to a close and nothing could go wrong. Perfect blue. And when it did, it sent everyone concerned rocketing into Kennaugh’s red zone.

Out of the blue into the red, as Neil Young did not quite say. Hey hey, My my. The ICC should be concerned.

• This article has been amended. The original article incorrectly identified Mitchell Starc as the bowler and Aaron Finch as the fielder involved.