Watching the superbowl and a few other American football matches, I have noted how the umpires are seldom criticized to the extent that our cricket umpires are about their decisions during the game.

I raise this because I think we should use the current technology to shift some pressure and media scrutiny off the umpires, in this case spreading the onus back to the team captains.

And they seem to have a lot more cameras and video replays available at the match than a cricket international.

But the American football system allows for the teams to challenge the umpires decision twice per half. Which I think is a major reason why their umpires do not come under so much media scrutiny, because the onus shifts from the umpire to the team that has the complaint about the decision due to their right to challenge it.

I look at the Australia v India Sydney test match. If both sides had two right to challenge a decision available to them, Anil Kumble most likely would have challenged the Andrew Symonds not out knick off Sharma to Dhoni. And most likely would have been given out by the video reviewer.

And Steve Bucknor would probably not have been criticized to the extent he was.

With all this technology available and being used by the media, in my mind it makes sense to use it "discriminatingly to the games advantage". I know if I had 6-8 cameras following my every move for 6 hours during the course of the day, it would be extremely difficult to avoid giving them the opportunity to catch 1 or 2 minutes of something embarrassing on the footage they film.

Life was a lot easier for an umpire in the 70's or even 80's due to less cameras, less zooming, less slow-mo's and less quality pictures. A lot of umpiring mistakes never made it to the media or general population, they do now.

I think now is the time to introduce the video challenge basically following is how I think it should be implemented in a test match situation

* Each team is given two rights to challenge per test match
* The challenge must be made within 60 seconds of the incident
* The captain or vice captain of either team may call for the challenge (or nominated representative if they are off the ground or not in the dressing room)
* The fielding captain can signal directly to the on field umpires his intention to challenge, the batting captain can use a beeper or electronic device
* The challenge can be made by both batting (eg.unhappy about being given out) and fielding (eg.unhappy they thought the batter was out) teams.
* Umpires can continue to call for a third umpire decision as they currently do
* Leg Before Wicket decisions may be included but only to the extent of whether the ball hit the pad without hitting the bat first

I also think this system could work in 50 over matches (1 or 2 challenges) and 20/20 matches (1 challenge)

Challenges are so self evidently sensible that I find opposition quite bizarre: I'd go for 2-3 per side per innings rather than 2 per side per Test.... but that's fine tuning - the important point is that the game would rarely be interupted, and the game would be better officiated.

This can be done using hotspot technology quite well. Also, it is quite easy to determine if the ball pitched outside legstump, or if the pad was hit outside the line of offstump. The only grey area in LBW's is height.

My question though.

What if the third umpire makes a mistake, or if one team disagrees with his interpretation?

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With respect acker IMO allowing any captain or player to Challenge an umpire is neither sensible nor desirable.

My reasons are that what if an umpire is challenged and that challenge is upheld, then being that the opposit captain is allowed to challenge, then he could (and would) challenge the ammended decission.

Also why the reason for a challenge when 3rd umpires are in place?.

Also it's just another blow to the long suffering umpires, I would say rather than allow a captain 2 challenges - no challenges should be allowed.

An alternative would be reporting an obvious very poor decission to the match referee.

Remember the run out row in one of Englands tours of the West Indies?, a run out decission was overturned during lunch or tea (not sure which).

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Ern

I have no answer for that "seamer"

But maybe it would help ease things if their was more than one umpire deliberating on the challenge, and if an official of each team while not being in with the umpires had access to the audio of their deliberations on making the decision and the video footage they were basing that on.

My thoughts are having 3 people deliberate.

I think cricket can afford to pay for some extra officials to get this working properly from the start.

Plus it may also be helpful if some of these extra officials spent some time with the television companies prior to the commencement of play ensuring the camera angles required are in the right place.

Not the "silver bullet" solution but it reduces the risk of a mistake by having more than one person deciding.

I also agree about "hotspot"

For a start under the current rules no player is allowed to ask an on-field umpire to send a decision to the video (third) umpire for deliberation, only the umpires on the ground can do that and they will not do it for veiwing ball hitting bat issues anyway.

Challenging the ammended decision would be totally pointless in my view as it would only be adjudicated again by the same 3 umpires who judged it the first time and most likely on the same evidence. I would also allow live audio and video of the deliberation process to go through to an official of each team. If dis-satisfied after the previous judgement the next step would be to complain to the match referee. Which is what they currently do, but with the challenge system would I envisiage do a great deal less.


Hardly a blow I would think, more a long overdue helping hand to the intensely media scrutinized ump's. I would think that umpireing standards would improve due to the stress reduction of having the team captains share the scrutiny of the electronic media.

If a captain has a problem with a decision or non-decision he appeals to take it to the video ump's. If he does not appeal to take it to them then the media asks him the captain "why not". If he wastes his two appeals on trivial long shot appeals and finds himself without a right to appeal on one that warranted one then the media asks him the captain "why"

Modern day umpires are currently being hunted by the media and cricket public with a zest seldom seen since the witch hunting in Europe and North America in the 16th and 17th centuries. And unfortunately being burned at the stake by the media and cricket public as well.

For cricket to turn its back on available technology and dig itself into deeper trouble with ever increasing electronic scutinization of its decision making process, with out seeking to modernise it's decision system is asking for even bigger trouble down the track.

This ideas intention is to help umpires umpire, stop them getting put under intense media pressure and making the team captains more accountable in the decision process and scrutiny as well.

That is not an alternative, thats what happens now.

I dont remember it, but it sounds like an isolated case.

I don't think cricket is the sort of game where an on-field player can be allowed to "challenge" the umpire. Furthermore, I'll never be in favour of any kind of limited or partial justice. IMO, every decision has to be as right as possible and this can only be achieved by using all the available resources to the full. This can only mean the combined talents of the two on-field umpires plus available technology checked and relayed by the third umpire. We need to get used to the fact that the "third official", where used, is not merely a bank of machines, but another human official at their end checking the situation. So in a sense, all 3 umpires become part of the ongoing game and to make it even more natural to onlookers, the 3 officials might be permitted to change places during the course of the game; that way, it will not be felt that Joe Bloggs is overruling Hashim Khan or Malcolm Franks on the field.

Getting back to the captains, they might be allowed to politely request the on-field umpires to double check a decision via their third colleague, but there should not be any restrictions on the number of times this is done. Once the system starts working, all concerned - players, captains, umpires etc - will realise that the truth can be sought out anyway and will try to work with it. Silly appeals, false claims and dodgy decisions will disappear because there wil be no point.

Duncan Fletcher has been going on about this for years but only now people are starting to agree with him.I can't see a problem,you challenge a decision and if you are right you keep that challenge but if you are wrong you lose that challenge and the game carries on.

The only only problem i see is where to set the limit of challenges,some would argue that twice a test isn't enough and others would say that is more than enough.Personally i think two for each innings should be allowed.

I'm agin it. The umpire is right - that's rule one. If the umpire is wrong - refer to rule one.

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100% agree. If we start letting "challenges" in, eventually the players will start mouthing off at the umpires when a decision doesn't go their way, like football, and I hate that

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