India v Australia: Third Test

[Amit]

You are right india did get well beaten, in my opinoin bucknar is a good umpire but when it comes to lbw decistions he is a bit poor making a decsistion which is out or not out.

[Maranello]

The umpires in the 4th Test were Shepherd and Aleem Dar..so why exactly are we talking about Bucknor?

I cannot for a moment countenance that any international umpire is deliberately biased or devious, and it's a cop-out to accuse them of dishonesty (not to mention being a libel).

The umpires in the second Test were Koertzen and Shepherd, whilst Bucknor and Billy Bowden officiated in the first Test. If people want to throw unbalanced accusations around, they should at least be prepared to back these with facts and evidence.

For the record, Bucknor has been in Pakistan for the past two Tests, doing the Pak-SL series with Bowden...so please, the excuses and blaming the defeat on "one-sided umpiring" should stop.

[Mike Small]

You're spot on mate. Only day before yesterday I was thinking about poor & whinning losers...almost inevitably now we see some Indian fans here calling the umpiring one sided and the skipper (Dravid) him self toling the press he thought the conditions suited Aus better then India, obvioulsy he backed it up by saying the Aussies adapted much better than them but that seems to be me another remark on the pitch it self on the lines of the pre match comments by Ganguly on how the grassy surface took the home advatange away from them.

Indian played poorly. Very poorly in fairness. And any excuses here will be sour grapes indeed.

[Occasional Fan]

It seems that hardly a Test match goes by these days without one side or the other (supporters, generally, not the players) having a pop at one-sided umpiring. A few weeks ago, David Shepherd - apparently the best, according to one of the above posts - was being soundly beaten up over some allegedly erroneous decision involving Pakistan. More recently, he was in the news having been astonished when an Aussie walked when Shep thought he was not out. Aleem Dar, Steve Bucknor and Darrell Hair have all been pilloried over some issue or another (can't find the evidence in my memory) within the last three or four months.

As far as I see it, these guys are all human and they all make the odd mistake. But biased? Not a chance. We've just got to let the umps get on with the job to the best of their very considerable ability and accept their decisions with good grace. I'm sure any of us who has stood for as much as a twenty over office match (the peak of my short umpiring career) would have nothing but admiration for these blokes - not to say enormous sympathy for those who get beaten up by the fans and press several times a year.

[SSA.]

Originally Posted by Amit

I think havving steve buckner in a match which has india in gives india bad luck and he gives wrong decisitions to india . and most of indias appealing for LBW , 1/4 of them should have been given out. the umpiring in this series has been poor , and one sided , which is unfiar to india I hink the ICC should look at this.

The umpiring cannot be held responsible for the total lack of application by the Top order Indian batsmen in Bangalore and Nagpur and to a certain extent Chennai as well.

India lost because they played badly. Yes The Aussies were excellent, but this team is capable of putting up a much better performance than what we have seen in Bangalore and Nagpur especially from the Batsmen.

[Maranello]

Originally Posted by Occasional Fan

It seems that hardly a Test match goes by these days without one side or the other (supporters, generally, not the players) having a pop at one-sided umpiring.

Spot on, OF. Accusing umpires of deliberate bias has always, for me, reeked of the worst case of sour grapes, but in the past few years the standard of umpiring really has improved so much that castigating them seems in real bad taste.. due to all the TV replayes and scrutiny and with ICC's Elite Panel of Test Umpires...genuine mistakes have decreased.

Sure..sometimes, genuine mistakes happen, but this is not football, where the players throw food at each other and French managers rant and rave about referees' bias. This is cricket - and we should be above that.

Cricket does not have red, yellow or green cards, or 5 minute penalties or sin-bins..or shouting at referrees and telling them that they "can not be serious"... because Cricket is not football or hockey or rugby or tennis. No other sport requires 5 days of rapt attention to lead to no result. In that aspect, cricket is like a metaphor for life, that things do not always lead to the clear-cut victory that we crave.

In any case, we love cricket because it is different..because along with everything else, it also signifies something more than mere sport... I am not pontificating on any medieval notions of chivalry or any Victorian ideas of being a gentleman, but rather the universal values of decency, fair play and team-spirit, which are cricket's values. So let's not debase these values by saying the umpires would prefer one team to win over another. In fact, it was to negate just this whingeing by Away teams that Pakistan in general, and Imran Khan in particular, campaigned so long and so hard for neutral umpires all through the 1980s - even going to the extent of unilaterally appointing neutral umpires from England for our home series with India way back in 1989... that was after the MCC, pressurised by England and Aus, had refused to even countenance the idea.

So now that after this long, hard slog we finally have neutral umpires in all Tests and most ODIs and have Elite Panels nd reviews etc, let us give them the respect they deserve. Sadly, Pakistani and Indian fans are probably the worst offenders in this regard...the former w.r.t. Shepherd, the latter w.r.t. Bucknor.

I have grown up with the idea that in life, and in cricket, after one has agreed to who the umpire is, one accepts every one of their decisions - no quibbles or post-match rants. When the finger goes up, standing your ground is just not cricket.

[Mike Small]

Originally Posted by Maranello

No other sport requires 5 days of rapt attention to lead to no result. In that aspect, cricket is like a metaphor for life, that things do not always lead to the clear-cut victory that we crave.

Beautiffuly put. Simply beautiful.