The Referral System – Bring it On!

Here is a piece of online cricket commentary I caught over the Australia v New Zealand ODI series -

“Mills to Ponting, no run, that's plumb but not given. Good length delivery, pitched outside the off stump and this one jagged back in. Ponting pushes forward to drive and is beaten by the angle. Looked out but umpire Davis was not impressed.
Hot spot picks up a touch on the front pad and a solid hit on the back-pat. Either way it looked out…”

And one from the India-NZL T20 encounter –

“Harbhajan Singh to Guptill, OUT, very bizarre decision! Guptill aims to pull a short delivery and gets a thick inside edge onto his thigh, the Indians appeal and the inside edge was obvious to the naked eye, umpire Gary Baxter doesn't appear as if if he's going to give it out and then all of a sudden raises the finger, Guptill doesn't want to go and McCullum can't believe it either”

Time and again the cameras and technology have exposed glaring mistakes made by umpires. Talk of the infamous Sydney test. Or Steve Bucknor adjudging Tendulkar out LBW at Brisbane in 2003, when the ball was sailing over the stumps by more than a foot. Or the millions of times Ricky Ponting has been hit on the pads bang in front of the stumps, but the umpiress did not budge.

Cricket today has become so competitive that there is just no room for errors, and especially no room for errors from the umpires. I cannot say that umpires of the decades gone by were impeccable, but today’s set of umpires (barring 1 or 2) cannot be called ‘elite’.

We all know how Bucknor and Benson messed up the Sydney test, notably with all their bad decisions going in favour of the Aussies. After this, India should have welcomed the referrals and been thoroughly prepared on their use. Unfortunately, they failed miserably with their challenges thru their debacle in Sri Lanka, and instead of analyzing their own errors, they spoke against the system. But was it the system’s fault that they ended up on the wrong side of most of the decisions referred? It showed a clear lack of awareness on the part of the Indians, who challenged with hope rather than certainty.

This innovation has already taken too long to be introduced. Bad umpiring decisions have affected a number of matches and a number of cricketers. My honest estimate is that Sachin Tendulkar has been robbed of at least 1000 runs in tests and ODIs, and Ricky Ponting has played some 40 more innings than he should have been allowed to.

Any new introduction will have teething problems. The players have to get familiar with the rules of the game. Technology has to become foolproof and remove all doubts. (Hawkeye cannot be relied on to extrapolate the path of a delivery.) Third umpires do not seem clear as to how much they can depend on hawk-eye. And some umpires are so bad that they make mistakes even with technology support!

The most disappointed aspect of the adoption process is the hesitancy shown by the players themselves. To my mind, it should have only been the Aussies resisting this move (with their standard line that ‘Umpiring mistakes are part of the game’). And nobody can now blame the umpire for a bad decision.

For cricket’s sake, I hope this concept is given the full go-ahead. A few chinks need to be removed:
1. Only if the challenge is conclusively wrong, should the challenge be lost. If the 3rd umpire cannot make a conclusive judgement, it is not the challenger’s fault.
2. ICC must ensure that the best technology is made available for all international matches. The best cricketers deserve the best technology.
3. A team should be allowed at least 3 erroneous challenges per innings. A minute’s delay will surely not affect commercial interests!

It’s then up to the cricketers to get comfortable with the system and know when the umpire has goofed up. They must be good judges themselves and be fully aware of proceedings on the field.

So let’s get the doubts in our minds out and let this wonderful innovation come through – it will surely take the game positively forward.