Umpires are in the news and for all the wrong reasons. The no-ball non call during the last ball of the IPL 2019 clash between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians saw tensions flare as umpire S Ravi failed to spot Lasith Malinga had overstepped when Bangalore needed seven to win off one ball.
After the match ended at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, RCB skipper Virat Kohli – of all players, it had to be against him – fumed at the miss which cost his team dearly as AB de Villiers would have been on strike for the free hit if the correct decision was made and five needed from one ball.
“We are playing at IPL level, not club cricket,” Kohli said “That’s just a ridiculous call off the last ball. The umpires should have their eyes open, it was a no-ball by an inch.”
Kohli’s counterpart Rohit Sharma was even more pointed in his criticism, saying such umpiring decisions cause a lot of harm.
“It’s not good for the game. Whatever is not good for the game, I’m not going to stand for it. It’s pretty simple, those decisions can cost you games. We prepare too much to win this tournament, to win games, and those kind of mistakes are not acceptable,” Rohit said.
First of all, let’s make one thing clear – IPL is glorified club cricket. It isn’t India’s domestic T20 tournament – that would be the Syed Mushtaq Ali tournament. With that little clarification out of the way. let’s move on to the bigger issue – umpires.
Looking at how furious Kohli and Rohit were at the end of that match – a legitimate delivery from Jasprit Bumrah had been called a wide during the match as well – one would imagine that the millions that are at stake on each IPL game means there is simply no room for any ‘avoidable’ mistakes i.e. human error.
Calls are being made to introduce line calls in cricket, as is the case in tennis. A bowler bowls a ball, dedicated cameras make an instant call of no-ball if that is the case and the decision is aired on screens at the ground.
Taking that idea further, as Kevin Pietersen opined on Twitter, maybe it’s time to do away with umpires altogether. Close decisions are being challenged by teams in all formats. Why not go straight to TV umpires for all appeals – lbw, close catches etc. No-ball calls can be left entirely to technology and human error can be all but eliminated from the game.
Do you want to see that? No umpires on the field. Or even if they are, used basically as glorified cap holders and jumper hangers. No Billy Bowdens or the incredible ‘dancing umpire’ of India. Watch his video below.
It is very easy to ‘solve’ the umpiring problem – just remove them. But in doing so, we will be taking the human element away from the game. With so much money involved in the game, especially in a tournament like the IPL or later on at the World Cup in England, patience is wearing thin as far as captains and teams are concerned. With millimetres deciding dismissals and outcome of matches nowadays, it seems inevitable that those paying top dollar would want the ‘glorious uncertainties of the game’ to be binned in favour of the sterile world of technology.
If that’s what captains, team owners and ‘investors’ want, it will happen. And the game would lose yet another element that has made cricket, cricket.
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