Neutral umpires - are they working?

[Peter Henderson]

It's just ridiculous that the powers that be are only prepared to use the technology to help get decisions right in the least important series. (Aus Vs World)

Then, after being a success IMO (when actually called upon, Rudi), they put it to bed and back we go to a higher volume of bad decisions in the proper cricket.

No commonsense whatsoever.

 

[age_master]

Anyone else think that, because a nation doesn't come across an umpire very often, their opinion of them is inflated?

Like, before the Ashes, Australians were all massive wraps for Aleem Dar, whom we hadn't had umpiring us for a while before that. Since then, we've had him pretty regularly, and he's made a few errors - suddenly he's a terrible umpire. We've copped Rudi and Bucknor heaps recently, and they're both atrocious in the eyes of Aussie observers.

Just something I've been stewing over for a while, anyways.

never thought much of Dar or Rudi (who is about the worst atm i reakon). Bucknor used to be very good but is past it for mine.

interesting theory though

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Being English doesn't alter the fact that a lot of your posts have been merely point scoring exercises against England. It's no good now trying to find some convoluted series of connections as to how what you were saying was relevant to the thread because it wasn't.

Maybe you should concentrate more on your own posts instead of reading things into other peoples posts which are not there. Both of my posts are perfectly relevant to this thread, whereas yours are petty and unsubstantiated snipes at another poster. You're probably a troll who snipes at everything other people write while saying nothing constructive yourself, but I can't be bothered to read anymore of your posts to find out.

 

[Slats4ever]

Anyone else think that, because a nation doesn't come across an umpire very often, their opinion of them is inflated?

Like, before the Ashes, Australians were all massive wraps for Aleem Dar, whom we hadn't had umpiring us for a while before that. Since then, we've had him pretty regularly, and he's made a few errors - suddenly he's a terrible umpire. We've copped Rudi and Bucknor heaps recently, and they're both atrocious in the eyes of Aussie observers.

Just something I've been stewing over for a while, anyways.

nope i've always thought dar was ordinary.

 

[Slow Love™]

During the last Ashes series, many Aus supporters (led by myself) were heated in their criticism of the weight of "poor" umpiring decisions made against Aus.

WI supporters should be similarly aggrieved at the amount of the "poor" decisions made against the touring team during the current series vs Aus.

IMO, both sets of criticism are justified.

Needless to say, the motivation behind this criticism lay in the fact that the "rub of the green" favoured the home team.

Unfortunately, it has been the same umpires responsible for the "****-ups."

Billy Bowden, Aleem Dar and Rudi are, at best, incredibly ordinary.

They cannot be accused of bias as they are not favouring the home team nor are they favouring one team consistently.

My question is whether the ICC should continue with the practice of appointing the best available neutral umpires or whether they should appoint the highest rated available umpires no matter what their country of origin.

It doesn't really matter that much, 'cause it's really a question of availability anyway. What you probably desire is that in the games you care about most (ie tests featuring Australia), we have access to the best umpires (which, by implication, are Aussie umpires).

I don't think it's the fact that the umpires are neutral that is the problem.

On the one hand, obviously I embrace technology as a worthwhile situation, the reasons for which are fairly obvious, given that we constantly use it to evaluate umpires' performance in every game anyway.

But aside from this, there are some other issues. Firstly, the pool for the International Panel is just too small. I don't know exactly what the problem is here - are there so few capable umpires coming up through the ranks? At some stage, clearly, the ICC dropped the ball here, because the influx of new umpires just seems too small.

As well as this, as I think somebody mentioned earlier - we have a tendency to rip an umpire completely apart and discredit their entire history if they have a stinker. It was only a short time ago that Dar was thought one of the best umpires, whose only flaw was that he was hard to convince on LBW decisions (but it was generally believed that at least he was fairly consistent on this). Now, suddenly, he's one of the worst. The reactions just get so out of proportion.

I believe that Rudi and Bucknor have been sliding badly for some time. I actually still think Bowden is a decent umpire who makes mistakes every now and then. I think Dar is still quite competent.

Although I think that technology will ultimately provide an easing of the bad decisions we've been seeing lately, it's obvious that many remain unconvinced. So therefore, we must get a bigger, better pool of umpires from which to work from. In Aussie football, when an umpire puts in a particularly bad performance, they get dropped for a while, so there are immediate consequences. In international cricket, they just move on to the next test match.

 

[marc71178]

It's just ridiculous that the powers that be are only prepared to use the technology to help get decisions right in the least important series. (Aus Vs World)

They were only trialling it, so chose the least meaningful seires for that trial (like they trial things in the CT, but wouldn't dream of it in the World Cup.)

 

[Zinzan]

The key point for me is that with neutral umpires, "home bias" is removed as something for the losing tourists to whinge about.

I'm still not convinced "home bias" is taken away particularly in Australia.

I don't think umpires conciously favour them....but I reckon sub-conciously decisions go in their favour because they are a great team, and when the likes of Mcgrath and Warne go up for an appeal...they seem to get a more 50-50 decisions go their way based on reputation.

I suppose in the same way that no 10 and 11 batsmen often get awful decisions against them when they are batting compared to someone like Gilchrist who umpires seem to feel more pressure to raise the finger. Anyway thats just my opinion.

 

[archie mac]

Having lived through home umpires, I am 100% certain the system we have now is the better choice.

 

[Scaly piscine]

I think the greater point is that Asian umpires getter a fiercer time from the press for such things. Whether or not the British get it too is inconsequent. Surely you agree?

It depends entirely on where the press is from on whether they get a 'fiercer time' or not. If a foreign umpires cuts short a Tendulkar or Inzamam innings they'd be absolutely slaughtered in the media over in India or Pakistan.

 

[Mr Mxyzptlk]

It depends entirely on where the press is from on whether they get a 'fiercer time' or not. If a foreign umpires cuts short a Tendulkar or Inzamam innings they'd be absolutely slaughtered in the media over in India or Pakistan.

And if a local umpire gives a poor 'not out' decision to one of the two, they'd be slaughtered in most other parts of the world.

 

[Scaly piscine]

And if a local umpire gives a poor 'not out' decision to one of the two, they'd be slaughtered in most other parts of the world.

Not nearly as badly as they would get slaughtered in India or Pakistan, who are fanatical to the extreme, which usually spreads to a lot of the press there - where as the press in other countries are mostly merely non-fanatical, unbiased producers of drivel.

 

[Dasa]

Not nearly as badly as they would get slaughtered in India or Pakistan, who are fanatical to the extreme, which usually spreads to a lot of the press there - where as the press in other countries are mostly merely non-fanatical, unbiased producers of drivel.

You believe what you want to believe...

 

[chaminda_00]

I think Neutral overall have improved the standard of umpiring, but i think that says more about how crap the standard of umpiring was before neutral umpires. Like players umpiring go through periods where they are on top of their game and others where they are below there games. But the thing with umpires is when they are not on top of their game it stands out more, then when they are.

Out of the current umpires there are only two that have been consistantly on top of their game recently, Harper and Taufel. The have been up and down like yo-yos when it comes to their form. Because we see the top 7 umpires more often then before they average performances stand out more, giving the prespection that the umpiring standards are lower.

I don't think we should go back to the times where average home umpires who weren't good enough where umpiring Tests, it already stuffs up ODIs. But maybe the best of best should umpire Test regardless of nationalities and the elite panel should get increased to 10, to reduce the workload of the umpires and maybe improve their consistancy. ATM majority of them seen burned out, through the non stop international calender.