Men in the Muddle

While Pakistanis have probably got over their anger towards Andy Atkinson, Indian cricket fans — and the team too, no doubt — see ...

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While Pakistanis have probably got over their anger towards Andy Atkinson, Indian cricket fans — and the team too, no doubt — see Simon Taufel and Steve Bucknor as the villains of the Lahore Test. The list of errors of omission and commission — some glaring — by these two over the past four days has already been pointed at by pundits as the reason for India’s defeat.

Yet, though you probably don’t want to know right now, there is another side to the story. The top umpires, like the cricketers they deal with, work under several kinds of pressure — and it doesn’t help that they are severely understaffed.

‘‘Umpiring is a thankless job’’, says a senior Indian umpire on condition of anonymity. ‘‘If you make a good decision, nobody praises you. But one mistake and you are hanged. Television replays and TV commentators add to your misery. We have to make on-the-spot decisions in a split second while the TV can replay the same action over and over again in slow motion. Field umpires don’t have that facility.’’

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The ICC’s Elite panel of umpires, introduced exactly two years ago to ‘‘ensure the highest possible standards and guarantee impartial adjudication’’, deploys two umpires to every Test match. Yet the panel has just eight members which, given the packed Test calendar, is patently not enough.

On an average, each member of the Elite panel stands in 12 Test matches and 15 one-day internationals, a potential on-field workload of 75 days per year.

The problem arose last year when the ICC removed three umpires — Asoka de Silva, David Orchard and Russel Tiffin — from the elite panel and replaced them with just one, Pakistan’s Aleem Dar. To make matters worse, India’s S Venkataraghavan announced his premature retirement. So the panel went from 12 to eight in one stroke.

Although the ICC’s international panel has 19 umpires they have not yet been asked to stand in during emergencies. ‘‘The eight Elite panel umpires for the coming 12 months will manage the upcoming workload,’’ ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed had said at the time.

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It’s an attitude that hasn’t gone down well with members of the fraternity. ‘‘How will the international panel umpires gain experience at the highest level when they are not given opportunities? The ICC doesn’t get the chance to assess them and give them future appointments,’’ says S K Bansal, a former international umpire.

‘‘There is no doubt the umpires are going through a lot of mental pressure because of the limited number of Elite panel officials available at present. Their work schedule is almost non-stop, given that cricket is played almost round the year. Yet they are expected to make no mistakes’’, said a senior all-India panel umpire. ‘‘Also, there is hardly any time available to them to rectify or work on their mistakes because when they aren’t officiating they are travelling.’’

The travel factor is important, says Bansal. ‘‘Elite panel umpires move from New Zealand to West Indies to Sri Lanka to England. Weather and other conditions vary drastically from place to place. The pressure of repeated appeals by the players and the background of 25,000-30,000 spectators shouting and screaming also makes it that much difficult for the umpires to make a correct decision at times.’’

So what’s the solution, apart from expanding the size of the ICC panel? Bansal has three.

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Umpires, he says, should not be appointed for an entire series. Instead, the ICC should evaluate their performances match-by-match. ‘‘That way, ‘wrong decisions’ can be eliminated or minimized.’’

Bansal recalls a Test in England where David Shepherd gave three batsmen out on no-balls. ‘‘TV replays showed that the bowlers had clearly violated the no-ball rule but the umpire never called.’’

Where a match-wise evaluation could help is in restoring confidence in the official and upholding the sanctity of the position. An umpire who makes a couple of bad decisions early on in the series will be viewed with suspicion by players for the remaining matches.

The second is a standardised retirement age — it currently varies according to the home country’s norms. ‘‘The retirement age in India is 58, English umpires retire at 65. One’s mental and physical faculties suffer, which could be why umpires like David Shepherd (64 years old) and Bucknor (58) are faltering in their decisions.’’ Third, a crackdown on excessive appealing. ‘‘It reeks of gamesmanship and a desire to place the umpires under such pressure that their decisions may favour the appealing/fielding side. It’s not in the interest of the game if the intention of the fielding side is to put pressure on the umpires,’’ Bansal said.

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But in the end he argues that neither improved technology (TV replays) nor an increase in the number of Elite panel umpires will be a solution to the malady of ‘wrong decisions.’ ‘‘Umpires are human being and they too can make mistakes. But if an umpire makes mistakes repeatedly and is not punished, it is bad for the game,’’ he concludes.