Eliminating Umpiring Blunders
Sat, Apr 19, '03
A curious thing entering today's start of the second C&W Test in (Port of Spain) is the large number of people who thought West Indies did well in the first Test at Georgetown despite going down by nine wickets to Australia in three and a half days.
Sure, the Windies -- hampered by off-the-field controversies and injuries -- had three centurions and had a couple of fighting partnerships. But three and a half days?
I think a major reason we were all so tolerant was the realisation -- be it at the conscious or sub-conscious level -- that the umpires literally took the game away from the Caribbean side on the opening day.
As far as I am concerned, if you lose four players inclusive of three specialist batsmen -- among them Brian Lara and Shivnarine Chanderpaul -- to bad umpiring decisions on the opening day of a Test match against a side as powerful as the Australians, you are doomed to lose. Unless, of course, the culprits provide balance, with some equally bad ones against the opposition.
Don't get me wrong. It's still possible that, had the umpires done perfectly, West Indies still would have lost. They are, after all, a pretty young team with numerous inadequacies, up against the world's most powerful team, no matter the absence of Glen McGrath and Shane Warne.
The point I am making though, is that with all those crucial decisions going against them on day one, West Indies had about as much chance as a snow ball in hell.
Lest we forget, the shockers on the first day went something like this: Devon Smith on Test match debut hit the ball with the inside half of his bat unto his pads and South African umpire, Rudi Koertzen, gave him out leg before.
Lara was given out leg before by Sri Lankan Ashoka de Silva to an Andy Bichel delivery clearly heading past off-stump.
Having just completed a stirring, 69-ball century, Chanderpaul was given out leg before by de Silva to a Bichel delivery pitched wide of leg stump which means that under the rules of cricket the appeal should be rejected, and Mervyn Dillon, sweeping at a Stuart McGill leg-break pitched wide of offstump and turning wider, was given out leg before by de Silva.
There were other de Silva errors of course. We remember his decision that Wavell Hinds was not out when Jason Gillespie's swinging full pitched delivery would have missed everything except middle stump and then, giving the same batsman out to a McGill leg break that would have missed the stumps with plenty to spare.
We have had our fill about human error and the inevitability of it. I, for one, am sick of that argument in defence of umpires who have proven time and again that they are below the required mark.
Having clearly decided, for whatever reason it is not yet ready to go the ultimately inevitable route of technology, the ICC needs to make sure that it has a rapid and even-handed system of promoting and demoting umpires to and from its elite panel.
Take the case of de Silva. Late last year in the India/West Indies series on the sub-continent, his reluctance to have doubt in even the most doubtful circumstances made him the butt of jokes. But he was at the World Cup and here we are with him again.
* Republished from Jamaica Observer.
