I was appalled by the umpiring decisions..more so because the bad decisions went against India. The admission of Australian monkey..Oops! cricketer Symonds, that he was indeed out at 30 runs, was not given out and so decided to stay back like a true Australian. only added fuel to the fire.
The injustice against the players of the subcontinent also continues when they are batting. This was evident from three occassions in 2007 when Sachin Tendulkar was declared out at 99, when he actually was not out.
It can be argued that the umpires are human and eventually the bad decisions against different teams would balance out. I do not agree to that. In recent cricket, the umpiring has been decidedly biased against players of the subcontinent.
- It is only the subcontinent players who are fined for excessive appealing. Eventhough, both the teams appeal with equal tenacity.
- It is only the subcontinent players who are reported for dissent, though it may happen that an Australian or an English player would have stayed at the crease for twice as long after being declared out and still gone scot free.
- In the current test match, there was an altercation between Symonds and Harbhajan. It was not clear who said what and both the players were called in by the match referee. Still, it was only Harbhajan who was reported for racial abuse. How could the match referee conclude that Symonds is a saint??
What I wish to tell is simple. Players make mistakes-players get penalised and fined a percentage of their match fee. Umpires are not doing their jobs for free, they are not doing it for charity. If they fail to do the job properly, they should be fined or at least they should be made to wear a shirt that says on the back "I SCREW UP A LOT!!".
Why should the umpires be penalised? Umpires making mistakes is not a new thing. It is just that TV has exposed those errors. In majority of the cases, the umpires are correct and it is not that umpires are biased towards non-subcontinent teams.
ReplyDeleteWell you could say some of them are prejudiced but not all.
Regarding the question of use of technology for decisions, what most senior players like Ian Chappell argue is that the technology is not yet so fool-proof and use of pictures and sound provided by media can become biased. Moreover, many times the images are unconclusive. A possible solution is to give the third umpire more powers to negate the decision of an on-field umpire when the case is conclusive. The third umpire should be able to correct the on field umpire rather than being referred to in case of doubt.
VG,
ReplyDeleteI do not intend to imply that umpires should be penalised for each and every wrong decisions that they take. Just as a fielder is not penalised for making a wrong appeal, an umpire should not be penalised for a wrong decisions.
But, a fielder does get penalised for over appealing. Similarly, an umpire should be penalised for incompetence, if it is beyond a threshold.