'iffy' decisions

January has been as full of good sporting action as always. With the Indian tour of Australia being covered on one channel and the Australian Open being covered on the other, getting up early has been worth the effort all holidays.

There has been one very noticeable difference between the two sporting events, the difference being that the action from cricket has been full of ‘dubious’ decisions from the umpires, and tennis has been absolutely clean with no attention being given to the umpires at all. (It just occurred to me that umpires not being given attention is a credit to the fact that people are happy with the decision-making going on in the sport… and also that fans tend to know the names of all umpires from cricket and never know the names of the chair umpires in tennis)

What has tennis done differently? Simple enough to answer… Used hawk-eye and used it in the best possible way (referring to the 3 challenge rule here). What is ICC doing to answer the problem?... Proposing to increase the number of umpires in the elite panel to 12. So should we expect better umpiring in cricket in the times to come? The answer is obvious. If the umpires ICC rates the best aren’t able to take the right decisions, how can we expect these new additions, who were not good enough in their eyes to be in the elite panel to begin with, take better calls?

When use of technology is proposed, the argument that runs in cricket is that no technology is a 100% sure and so cannot be used. (btw.. they do admit that hot-spot is a 100%er but forget it while making this comment). Well, that bewilders me because if the umpires are correct 50% of the time while making 'close calls' and technological aids help make correct decisions 90% of the time, why would anyone want to rule in favor of not using technology (at least as a part of some 3 challenge rule like the one in tennis and also with an operator who knows how to use to technological aids)?

Well, I would just like to end the post here by saying that to get rid of the “human-errors” as they call them, it’s time to take a little more help from the inspired human creations.