Umpiring the Ump

What a great game of Test cricket at Nottingham! If there ever was a need for an advertisement of Test match cricket, here was one. Notably, we seem to be getting quite a few of these of late. In fact, Test match cricket has become so interesting in the modern day that the case for getting rid of it now seems increasingly absurd! What is equally absurd though is the case for extending the failed DRS or Decision Review System. England won't be complaining about the DRS at all, considering that it has won them the first match this Ashes. It's almost intriguing too that the tides of the DRS - a system so staunchly supported by viewers and experts in England - always seem to favor the Poms!

Frankly speaking, the DRS is a failed mechanism. Although novel when introduced, the system has been disappointing in adding flavor to the game. Let's face it - the DRS has taken the zing out of this particular Test match for both sides. The umpires have been allowed far less sleep after its inception and captains now spend as much time training their players on umpiring as they do on batting, bowling or fielding! There are technical issues with the DRS as well, I hear, but I have enough complaints against it without having to even touch on those.

Crossing his heart: Umpire overturning a decision

Firstly, as hard as it is for the system's supporters to admit this, players are not exactly great umpires and they certainly aren't great umpires when they're playing for their country and are fighting for sporting glory. They don't have to be either. Even if they were great umpires, there is enough stress on them to perform their playing duties without having to watch the lines, predict leg-befores or sense faint edges. Why all this fuss? If the umpire can't do his job all so well, how can the players be expected to do it? After all, when the ball is being bowled, the umpire has nothing else to do but watch closely and make decisions. He's paid for it and he's expected to be good at it. If part of his job is being given to the player, you might as well start allowing umpires play for their teams on the field as well!

My second grievance with the DRS is the fact that the umpire's authority on the field is essentially being challenged by it. An umpire is a match official. He is above and beyond the players and therefore, it is his duty to ensure that the game is played fair and square. As much as we universally agree that an umpire is a human being and is hence entitled to make his fair share of mistakes, no umpire likes to know when his decision is wrong. No umpire likes to overturn a decision. It is no coincidence then that when an umpire overturns a decision early in the match, he suddenly starts looking so ordinary for the rest of the game. No, it messes with the morale of the umpire. He does not feel authoritative anymore and when an umpire does not feel like an authority, he almost loses the ability to stand above and beyond the game of cricket he officiates in, thereby becoming unable to ensure that the game is played fair and square. After all, that is his primary duty, without which, in the age of technology, there is no need for him to stand with a hat on his head all day.

My third grievance is quite clear cut. When an umpire has a bad day and gives an absolute howler of a decision at a crucial juncture in a match (like Aleem Dar did with Stuart Broad) and when the team at the receiving end has run out of reviews to challenge him (like Australia did in the same episode), the DRS effectively fails. The DRS, I hope, wasn't formulated in order to check the umpiring skills of players and captains and penalize them for default on that front. It was, again I hope, formulated in order to arrive at the right decision. In the above instance, the right decision certainly wasn't arrived at. At the end of the game, that particular instance proved to be quite decisive and Australia, therefore, in a way lost this match due to their poor umpiring skills. So how then did the DRS prove to be a success?

My case is not to call for a return to the previous status quo. What world cricket needs is to stop reviewing the umpire and allow the umpire review for himself. It must become more of a convention - perhaps even part of the training of umpires - to use technology by on-field discretion when you're in doubt. Also, when an on-field umpire makes a call which violates all common sense and is clearly obvious to the man assisted by technology (which is the third umpire), the latter must make an intervention and ask the on-field umpire to correct his call. In this way, the umpires are not made to lose their authority and nor are they challenged, and eventually, the correct call is made every single time. The players are also relieved of their umpiring duty and can now play the game without a fuss.

When the DRS was introduced, many people called comparisons with tennis and invoked the great success of the review system in that game. Unfortunately, cricket is not tennis. Cricket involves far more complex variables and there is nothing really clear cut about it. So it's time to let the umpires do their job without wreaking any further havoc.

Wimbledon 2013 - Still anybody's game

I'm a bit late on my blog post on Wimbledon this year - one of my most favorite sporting tournaments. What makes Wimbledon so special is, of course, the court. Not many lawn tennis tours in the modern day are really played on lawn. The reason is pretty obvious - lawn courts are terribly difficult to maintain in pristine condition. This year's Wimbledon just proved how difficult maintaining lawn courts can be. In what later became an unfortunate incident, the All England Lawn Tennis Club's main groundsman retired last year. Perhaps not so coincidentally, everyone playing at SW19 this year have been slipping and sliding on some lush grass. To be frank, as a viewer of Wimbledon this year, I've felt at times as though I was watching an ice skating show, not so much the showpiece event of world tennis. From Maria Sharapova to Victoria Azarenka, tennis stars have been falling flat on the ground. Perhaps the nastiest fall of them all was suffered by Juan Martin Del Potro during his quarterfinal game against Spaniard David Ferrer. Luckily for Del Potro, his 6'6" height means that the court is only three steps wide, so he later decided that he would win the game without having to sprint after the ball at all.

The Fancied Quartet: All back home

Slippery or not, lawn generally is hailed as the surface that separates the legends from the lads. To win on grass, one needs a sharp and accurate serve, some great court sense and a rather cool head. Blind slapping won't work here. Perhaps that explains why the genius of Roger Federer held sway over The Championships for so long, winning the title seven times! That's what makes lawn tennis so exciting - a moment of callousness can cost you a game, a set, maybe even a match. And so, even though I'd blogged last year about Wimbledon being anybody's game, one year on, nothing much has changed about that theme. In fact, things have only gotten eerier! Rafael Nadal, flying to London after winning Roland Garros for the eighth time, was put on a flight back to Mallorca very early by an unheard Steve Darcis. Maria Sharapova, the powerhouse of female tennis, slipped, skated and slid out in the first week as well. Victoria Azarenka barely put a foot on court before packing her bags due to injury. Defeat also greeted Caroline Wozniacki early in the tourney with the Dane blaming the grass for her undoing. Serena Williams - a player so dominant that Andy Murray thought of challenging her to play him - lasted long enough to dominate the little known players in the first week but bowed out in the quarters against a reinvented Sabine Lisicki. But perhaps the greatest upset of them all - Roger Federer, holder of every known record in Wimbledon and world tennis history, crashing out in the second round to Sergiy Stakhovsky. Stakhovsky may well make it to many a quiz question in the near future if Federer decides to retire anytime soon.

What really made the difference this year? Was it the grass? Was it a dying old generation? Or was it simply the growing prowess of unknown names in world tennis? The answer to me seemed fearlessness. While many big guns seemed hounded by their past glory and pressed by intimidating expectations, the little unheralded kids of world tennis played a freewheeling brand of tennis largely unseen in past years and highly suited for lawn courts. Sabine Lisicki's defeat of Serena Williams was particularly revealing on that front. With the big American expected to steamroll the unfancied German with a barrage of aces and whizzing winners, Sabine let loose her passions on court and played particularly aggressive tennis with little regard for the scoreboard.

Perhaps the grass was rather slippery. But then again, it was the same old grass for Sabine Lisicki and Del Potro as it was for Rafael Nadal or Serena Williams. Grass often tends to favor the brave. For that reason, the hallowed lawns of Wimbledon would probably always be for anybody's taking.