It’s high time to set wrong to right. Bad umpiring is on rise and what can be done to correct it.

Vishal Uppal analyses the reasons behind sudden spurt in wrong umpiring decision. It can be attributed to over dependence on technology; but there are many factors that are contributing to poor umpiring decisions.

There was a time when decisions on the field were solely made by the umpires. The players trusted the umpires for their neutrality and keen eye for detail. A cricket lover can tell you the contribution of umpires who left the permanent mark in umpiring history. David Shepherd was loved and respected by players for his decision making ability and we never saw any player arguing with him on any of his decisions. Dickie Bird, Simon Taufel and Srinivas Venkatraghavan commanded the same respect from players. Their names became synonymous with umpiring. However, cricket, though a gentlemen game suffered through bad umpiring. It can be traced back to the last three decades of previous century. There were numerous decisions of biased and faulty umpiring by umpires who might have gained pennies through it. Neutral umpiring gained prominence with strengthening of International Cricketing body, ICC, but it was absent during 80s and some of part of 90s. The ugly face can be seen in India Vs Pakistan matches in Sharjah in 80s. Shakoor Rana was famous for his argument with Mike Gatting and Jeremy Coney and his decisions that went in favor of Javed Miandad and players of Pakistan team. Darrel Hair was known for his dubious decisions and the most controversial of all umpires was Steve Bucknor. Though regarded as one of the best, he has maximum number of altercations with players and captains of cricketing sides.

Bad umpiring in current form is costing matches to the teams. Though, an umpiring decision can be reviewed and reversed, the instances of team not opting for review or with review option expired has led to an entire match thrown in favor of other team. In a match between Pakistan and Afghanistan in ICC World Cup 2019, Rashid Khan trapped Imad Wasim in front when he was on 1. The scorecard at that moment was 145 for 5. The umpire ruled it not out. The replay clearly showed that the ball trajectory had met the required criteria to be given out. Imad Wasim survived and produced a match-winning knock of unbeaten 49.

In the first match of Ashes 2019 Test series, there were 7 wrong umpiring decisions with 5 being overturned by DRS. The performance of umpires came under intense scrutiny. Aleem Dar and Joel Wilson created a bad taste for teams and fans. Both were pounded on twitter for the alarming number of wrong decisions.

Why is it happening? The number one reason is use of technology. Umpires are probably not paying attention due to the fact that technology will help them if they fail. In the time when technology was limited to stump mic and television cameras, the umpires had to concentrate on each detail from ball being thrown and how it went towards the batsman. With extensive use of high speed cameras, drones, 3D models, UltraEdge audio and heat detectors, the umpires consider them as full umpiring gear. On the contrary, the umpire must consider technology as helper rather than part of umpiring package.

The second reason for bad umpiring is lack of experience. Most of the well known umpires like David Shepherd and Simon Taufel were first class cricketers. They had to leave cricket due to injury. Their grasp of the field was impeccable. This made them world class umpires. Most of the current lot have not played cricket at international or county level. This lack of experience shows at crucial decision like edging and caught before leg.

The third and final reason is the environment. The current form of cricket is aggressive. The pressure to win is high as leagues like IPL have huge money involved. The batsmen play all kind of weird and non conventional shorts to score runs. This puts tremendous pressure on umpires. The bright lights, the white ball thrown at exceptional speed at white bat, the flashing advertising boards, the players wearing loud colored outfit and noisy crowd creates a vision blur for the umpires. For umpires of old era, the grounds were not crowded, the advertising boards were simple, the matches were played during the day and finding a red ball edging out of white bat was comparatively  simple.

The solution to the bad umpiring affair is to fix the surroundings as well a coaching the umpires on sharpening senses to judge better. Training former league players to become umpires can also help the sport. Cricket fans love umpires as they love their teams. We will never want Artificial Intelligence to replace human umpiring. I hope this phase of bad umpiring will pass. Positive steps by governing bodies will fix the problem of bad umpiring.