Cricinfo - Blogs - Different Strokes - Give the umpires a break

After the Australia-India Test in Sydney last January, marred by very poor umpiring – decisions and player management – by Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson, I wondered how much of the problem was the result of fatigue. Most umpire-related flare-ups – Darrell Hair, The Oval 2006 (and Adelaide, 1997), Rudi Koertzen, Hobart 2007 – tend to happen late in Test matches, with the game on the line and tensions high.

I suspect that umpire weariness leading to poor judgment was a big factor in these controversies. One of the ‘criometricians’ on the It Figures blog could check if there is a strong correlation between mistaken decisions and the stage of the match, but I bet there is. And it is worth asking Test umpires whether it is a problem.

Players rest while their team is batting. We acclaim the endurance of batsmen who spend 80 or 90 percent of a match on the field, because they have played a long innings. Players learn how and when to ‘switch off’ while on the field. But the poor old umpires are on the field throughout and can never really ‘switch off’.

The solution seems simple: introduce shifts. Have a squad of three or four umpires in a Test match, and rotate them every session out on the field and as 3rd and 4th umpires. Optimally there should be four umpires per match but even with three rotating, umpires would spend only two sessions per day on the field.

Of course Test matches already have four umpires, but only two actually work. The 3rd umpire relaxes in an air-conditioned booth watching the game on television, the 4th brings on the drinks and occasionally a box of balls. Clearly, these guys are pretty underemployed.

Possible objection 1: changing umpires in the middle of an innings will produce inconsistent decisions. But the rules on 'line calls' are very clear. Major league baseball rotates home plate umpires in series between two teams even though the umpire’s view of the strike zone is far more subjective than anything in cricket.

Possible objection 2: there are not enough quality umpires. Perhaps, though some of the worst problems recently have involved those regarded as amongst the very best. In the short-term, a better referral system will help, and over the longer term, more exposure and experience will improve quality. But if short supply is the real constraint, maybe we need to think about Test match umpires from the other – distaff – half of humanity?

A study of poor umpiring decisions would require a huge amount of reading through match reports. I hope someone does it one day, but it's unlikely for it to happen soon (unless someone's been keeping logs of bad umpiring decisions).

I'm not at all convinced that more umpiring errors happen late in games, though it's plausible. The difference with decisions in late and close situations is that there's often no opportunity to come back for the other side. A plumb LBW not given in the first over of day one might be remembered by fans of the bowling side, but it won't evoke the passion of a bad call when there's a hundred runs to win, five wickets in hand, and the batsman's on 120 and flaying the attack everywhere.

And another thing to think about is that often the pitch has deteriorated on day 5 and there are lots of balls hitting the pads (I don't have stats on this, but it seems plausible) and so more opportunities for bad decisions. You'd really want to be considering the percentage of decisions which are bad, rather than simply the number of them.

It occurs to me that the ICC keeps track of this stuff for its umpiring ratings, but I don't think that the details are made public.

There is a bit of a break in an umpire's routine as he moves between the two roles of bowler's end and striker's end, and during the changeovers. But the baseball analogy fails here, as one umpire has the plate for an entire game (not to say that rotating the umpires is thus bad, just that diamond practice is meaningless in that respect).

As to the actual idea, it seems to me that three is the right number, as it balances the sessions properly (and the TV umpire doesn't need the same kind of skill as the ones on the field, so you could specialize that position). The rotation schedule does need to be made known in advance, so that there can be no accusation of favoring one side in the rotation (to the extent the final set matters, that is just one more variable the captain would need to consider at the toss).

Fergus, certainly the idea to give a break to the umpires has some merit. No one doubts that. They definitely need some rest like everyone else. The only thing I objected to was the data Stephen has compiled to make his point. Symonds' example was the most prominent one. And it is a fact that it occurred in the first inning. If he had not mentioned it, I would not have been able to say anything. :-).

Having made my point if it was not clear earlier, I will not comment further on this issue here.

Although the article is written in good spirit, the evidence it uses is flimsy. The author quotes 3 bad decisions late in the innings and uses that as his basis for argument. I would like to point out the other side of the 'umpires are human' argument. Anyone remember Emerson no-balling Murali? Or Hair reporting Murali and Chauhan ? Australian umpires have been known to report players from teams that are going to tour aus in the near future (and notoriously the spin bowlers). Are they doing so out of fatigue? Are we to ignore this issue because it evokes sharp sentiments from both sides and focus only on the aspect of fatigue?
Truth is as Stephen writes, we don't have quality (& unbiased) umpires. We need to invest in better umpires and hold them accountable. Mike Denness got off, Hair got off, Emerson retired happily but the players have a lot more at stake and we cant short change them because we are stuck on some archaic notion of needing a human umpire. The game is more important

Thanks for all the support for this idea. I don't know how to bring it to the attention of the powers that be, but without being immodest, I do think it should be looked at seriously. It won't solve all the problems with umpiring, but it will help, especially if combined with careful use of technology & with a transparent performance evaluation system.

To clarify for a couple of responders: I wouldn't claim to have offered in the 600 words allowed, proper evidence that umpires' performance suffers as a result of fatigue - I suggested a thorough statistical analysis & a survey of umpires (& I would add now, players). My intuition is that the conclusion of a rigourous analysis would be that fatigue does matter.

On the baseball analogy: umpires do not rotate within single games, which last only 2-3 hours. But MLB teams play series of several games over a few days. The same umpire crew handles a full series, & the home plate umpire rotates through the crew for each game in the series.