Robles 94 stalev 36. Tony left the cueball in the rack. It clearly looked in the rack to me. Tony took ball in hand behind the headstring. Stalev insisted it was not. Big hullabaloo over it. Tony missed. Stalev at the table.
Guys, I love Tony to death, but he did make a mistake. It's not Tony's job to pick up the cue ball from the rack area -- that's the job of the racker. It's up to the racker to agree that the cue ball is in the rack area, and he (the racker) picks the cue ball up and slides it down to the kitchen area.
The problem is, we in the livestream area can't see the angles well, and even the commentators are having a hard time commentating on the match with just a monitor's view. Some angles (and some balls, for that matter) don't look like they "go," but then you see the player get up there and shoot them as if they were hangers.
It is Evgeny's right to inspect where the balls lie, and attempt to rack the balls where those balls lie. Even if it's a futile attempt, and he ends up handing the cue ball to Tony anyway (which is supposed to happen, remember).
To me, that cue ball was eclipsing the outline of the drawn rack area on the table, therefore it was in the rack area. But that's not Tony's job to just go up there and pick up the cue ball before Evgeny had a chance to inspect and agree. Fair is fair, and no, it's not a pedantic thing. We teach players here to never touch the cue ball unless the opponent hands it to you. Avoids a ton of arguments.
EDIT: by the way, when Tony subsequently missed the breakshot and slapped the shaft of his cue on the bed of the table, he's lucky that Evgeny didn't choose to leverage the 15-point unsportmanship foul (the commentators Geoff Conway and Gene Mann both mentioned this). That would've added insult to injury. Fortunately, Evgeny didn't.
With that said, let's go Tony!
-Sean