Injecting technology into umpiring
Nandakumar Moorkath - 11 January 2003

The recent outrageous decision of the umpire at Wellington - adjudging Sachin Tendulkar out leg-before when he was, by all counts, not out - throws up an unrecognised, often unpublicised role of the umpire in making or breaking a player's career. Seemingly innocent human error - like the one mentioned above - becomes relatively less innocent considering that cricket has become a matter of national and personal honour. It then falls to the International Cricket Council (ICC) to ensure that only the best umpires get the chance to officiate in international matches.

It is unfortunate that Tendulkar has been at the receiving end of so many "poor" decisions, and one can recall more than a few instances when Australian or South African umpires decided against giving him the benefit of the doubt. Other top batsmen from India - Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, for example, have also been adjudged wrongly, and while bias does not necessarily enter into it at all, undoubtedly the dismissals would have demoralised the Indian batsmen and the team as a whole.

Another contentious matter relates to judgements concerning no- balls, wides and over-length. There have been many instances when the umpires have called genuine deliveries as no-balls and have not done so when there was over-stepping! Similar irregularities persist with wide deliveries, not to mention instances of five- and seven-ball overs.

What is the remedy for the above anomalies? One way out would be to subject all decisions to supervising umpires at the ground and deliver the final verdict only after the approval of those umpires, via walkie-talkie, perhaps. The third umpire is already used for line decisions, and undoubtedly technology is at a stage where it can be used to delivery fair and speedy verdicts on matters like leg-before-wicket.

The experiment at the ICC Champions Trophy - when the third umpire was consulted on certain leg-before decisions - was by all means a successful one, and it is time now for the ICC to debate the issue and come up with a suitable alternative - as soon after the World Cup as possible, if not during it.

In one-day internationals, where every ball and run count for much, such abnormal decisions can have disastrous effects on the career of a player and in determining the outcome of the match. The authorities concerned must therefore ensure that players and teams get the best possible professional men to do the job and institute a fool-proof system of ensuring fair judgement in all match-related decisions on and off the field.

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