Match referees - consistently inconsistent

Prem Panicker

Reader Aman Bharti sent me a mail the other day, signed ‘Yours exasperatedly’.

Before I get to that mail, I need to mention a tangential issue here: It is at one level heartening, the amount of response rediff.com gets from the readers. At another level, it is frightening, and somewhat saddening: frightening, because it raises the bar impossibly high as far as reader expectation is concerned; and saddening, because over the years it has become impossible to cope with the flow, to read and respond to every single letter that comes our way.

I’ve in recent times had someone suggest that failure to do so is “arrogance”. To which I can only reply that reading and responding to something like 500 mails on a lean day would leave no time for regular work – and that would be an abdication of responsibility. Therefore… your understanding, and indulgence, please.

Back to the contents of Aman’s mail, reproduced here in full:

“Imagine that you had a policeman posted at your residence to guard your property. One day you come home and catch a thief making off with your property, while the policeman sleeps on the job. You wake the policeman up, point out to the him that there has been an attempted robbery, and have the man arrested.

The Inspector hears the story, and comes down to see you. You expect he will take some action based on the incident. After all, someone was breaking the law and stealing. And one of his men, the policeman, was sleeping on the job, failing to perform him duty. So you look forward to hearing what the inspector has to say.

The Inspector says, "The policeman did not notice the crime. If he did not notice it, it is not for you to point it out. You should shut up and put up with the theft, and not bother the policeman. I am having you arrested for your disreputable behavior in bothering my policeman."

Absurd isn't it? Yet this is just what has happened in Australia, with Stephen Fleming being fined for dissent. What I don't understand is, how can anyone take this farce seriously?”

How, indeed? For those who came in late, Australia put one too many fielder outside the circle while field restrictions were on. Fleming took a free hit at the ball, then pointed out to the umpire that a no-ball had to be declared given the infringement in the field restrictions.

The umpires agreed, and called it a no-ball. Surprise, surprise, they then report the Kiwi skipper. And match referee Hanumant Singh fines Fleming for dissent – in the process giving the rest of us yet another sound argument for the total abolishment of match referees.

Firstly, dissent has to follow a verdict – if you haven’t given a verdict, I can’t dissent with it, can I? In this instance, Fleming spoke his piece before the umpire made his call – how did the match referee then put the cart before the horse?

Secondly, why did the umpires report Fleming in the first instance? Could it be, as Aman hints in his letter that the umpires were miffed that their own negligence had been spotted, that their incompetence had been shown up?

Finally, what was the basis of their complaint? That Fleming had pointed out the presence of the extra fielder? As per the rules, the captain of either side is perfectly within his rights to discuss any infringement in the playing laws with the umpires, at any point of time – so what were the umpires complaining about, and why did Singh uphold that complaint?

And now what? The ICC appoints a committee to go into it?

When the justly famous Mike Denness did his number in South Africa, there was a suggestion that collective outrage expressed in India owed to the fact that Sachin Tendulkar was one of the players targeted. At the time, many in the media – including this column -- had pointed out that the issue was not the punishments meted out, but the inconsistency with which match referees mete out punishments in the first place.

ICC chief Malcolm Gray had, in the days following the Denness imbroglio, indicated that this question of inconsistency was going to be addressed immediately, if not sooner.

Begs the question: how soon is immediately? Because obviously, as far as cricket refereeing goes, the only constant is its inconsistency.

Over in Australia, Fleming gets it in the neck for a perfectly legitimate act. Across the world, in India, Nasser Hussain questions umpiring decisions, and flat out pronounces them wrong – dissent, anyone? He also, by his silence, encourages his team mates to take pot shots at the umpiring and even question individual decisions – vide Darren Gough suggesting that the umpire was wrong, in the fourth ODI, to give Tendulkar in on the caught behind appeal.

One match referee, Hanumant Singh, produces a one-line judgement that, in terms of ponderous prose, belongs in the script of Yes Minister. I mean, let’s see you try and say this in one breath: "After considering all the arguments from both sides, Stephen Fleming's past record and the fact that to the best of my knowledge this is the first incident of its kind, but keeping in mind the International Cricket Council's express concern to speed up the process of cleaning up the game of its unsavoury elements, it has been decided only to fine Stephen Fleming 40 per cent of his match fee for violation of the ICC code No 3, namely showing dissent to the umpire's decision."

The other match referee, Dennis Lindsay, has absolutely nothing to say despite numerous instances of flat out dissent.

So much for consistency?

How much more of this will it takes, before something snaps? Last time round, it was India – the next time, some other team, some other country, is going to light the fire.

Meanwhile, the umpiring in the ongoing home series between India and England deserves just one word – sucky! (Having said that, just a few minutes back I watched umpire Darrell Hair robbing Herschelle Gibbs blind, the latest in a line of some very funny decisions in the VB triseries in Australia.)

It has been suggested that India’s policy of fielding a different set of umpires for each game is responsible for the problem. I’d disagree – the VB series in Australia has used the “best” umpires on offer, and the results have not been noticeably better than what obtains in the India-England series.

Besides, using a plethora of umpires is not new – reader Srikanth Nathella, in a superbly done piece recently, tore that particular theory to bits.

The real problem here has not been the number of umpires used, but their uniform mediocrity. The fifth India-England ODI, at the Firozeshah Kotla the other day, actually produced the ridiculous situation of a third umpire, with benefit of umpteen video replays, actually getting a run out call wrong – and believe me, to get it wrong when presented with clear angles really takes some doing.

Begs the question: why? For an answer, go back to the basic ill of Indian cricket – a chaotic domestic structure calculated to breed mediocrity. That is true of our players, and it is equally true of the umpiring. At the Ranji and Duleep levels, umpires routinely get away with murder – no balls are left uncalled, atrocious decisions abound.

Captains do submit end of match reports – but for the most part, they are not worth the paper they are written on, because being an umpire in India is more about who you know in your zone, than about how competent you are. Besides, most captains tend to be careful not to criticize – they know that it will make no difference to the umpire’s career anyway, and who knows, the same umpire could well be standing in the next game, and might pay the captain and his team back for the negative report.

If the board is halfway serious about improving the standards of umpiring, domestic cricket needs to be the area of focus. The question though is – is the board really interested?

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