“TV umpire to director, we have a review for …” This phase of the procedure begins when players disagree with the call made by the on-field umpires. or if those referees are not sure. Using gadgets and visual evidence, the umpire upstairs then renders a decision.
The mechanism is now an essential component of the contemporary game. Cricket is the sport that has adopted electronic officiating the most out of all the sports. Transparency, honest, assured communication, and faith in the technology are essential to the integrity of the system.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology approved the original electronics, and all that’s needed to get the umpires’ decisions and pertinent data over to the public is to hook them up to speakers and screens. Therefore, the human factor—what umpires say and how they say it—matters the most.
Before drawing an eerie parallel, former elite umpire Simon Taufel told Cricbuzz that “the two biggest skills required in TV match officiating are composure and effective communication.” He said that “businesses that need to focus on communicating effectively, something like air traffic control, use agreed terminology and work with non-English speaking people.”
“The lowest common denominator must be our starting point. Even if it can sound too simple, without it, there is ineffective communication. We operate an international game, and many people find it difficult to speak English.”
Umpires seem to be operating on autopilot because of their familiar DRS script, but maintaining consistency is important. What they say has to be repeatable in order for it to be credible and trusted. and acknowledged by everyone concerned and by everyone who is interested in the result.
“It can come across as robotic, but when you have very clear, agreed communication phrases of introduction, identification, requests and acknowledgement, then you leave very little room for human error and misunderstanding,” Taufel stated.
He is knowledgeable about the subject. Taufel was the ICC’s umpire performance and training manager from November 2012 to August 2016. He had established a stellar reputation as an international umpire from January 1999 to August 2012, during which he was given the David Shepherd Trophy a record five times in a row.
He served at the ICC during the same period as senior administrators Vince van der Bijl, Geoff Allardice, and David Richardson. Leading umpires of the time, like as Steve Davis and Ian Gould, contributed to the transformation of basic electronic umpiring, which had arrived in November 1992 and was first used as DRS in July 2008. Early on at the ICC, there was a joke among staff members that the acronym DRS stood for “the David Richardson System” due to the CEO’s constant efforts to enhance and streamline the system.
The tweaking goes on. The decision was made in March 2022 for the television umpire to monitor no-balls. As a result, “I have checked the front foot and it is a fair delivery” was added to the DRS script. Time was saved, and on-field umpires could continue to monitor the play in front of them. Even though the modification to the playing circumstances makes sense, it was years before it was approved since it was passed by committees of the MCC, who are in charge of maintaining the “laws,” and the ICC.
The first significant step toward relaying umpire-broadcaster communication to television viewers was done in November 2014. “We held off on doing that for a long time on the basis that, quite often, a good decision can be ruined by a poor explanation,” Taufel stated. “You become protective of your match officials to ensure you don’t fall over in that space.”
According to Taufel, there were two challenges: “The first was for the match officials to orally sell the decision and clearly state what they intended and why they were doing it. The second was getting the TV match official to speak and explain what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, while the commentators remained silent. Although it required a leap of faith, it succeeded.
spectacularly well, as demonstrated once more on Sunday at Eden Gardens during a match between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Royal Challengers Bangalore. The sluggish full delivery that Virat Kohli had slapped to Harshit Rana for a return catch felt like it had reached him over his waist, high enough to be declared a no-ball. Before Kohli insisted that they look into it, the on-field umpires, Akshay Totre and Vinod Seshan, considered the possibilities and asked television official Michael Gough to look into it. Replays proved that Kohli was right regarding the height of the ball. However, they also demonstrated that he met the delivery well outside of his crease, negating the relevance of his argument.
The following is made plain by “law” 41.7.1: “Any delivery that passes or would have gone over waist height of the striker standing upright at the popping crease, without pitching, is unfair. The umpire is required to declare and indicate no-ball if a delivery of that kind is made.”
The front foot of Kohli was positioned approximately one meter ahead of the crease. He was also standing on his back foot. According to the data generated by the gadgets, if he had been “standing upright at the popping crease,” the ball would have reached him twelve centimeters below his waist.
Gough dismissed Kohli with just cause, infuriating the batsman to the extent that he lost half of his match pay. Unfairly, the umpires have taken a large portion of the ensuing criticism. Rather, Kohli ought to have been angry at himself for succumbing to Rana’s cunning sucker blow and for not understanding what a waist-high no-ball is. Kohli was not correct. The data demonstrated that the officials were right.
“The biggest challenge with the television umpire role is that once a decision is referred or reviewed, we never get it wrong,” Taufel stated. In light of this, Taufel, who currently oversees umpires in franchise leagues, anticipates a class of officials who only ever make decisions in front of a screen.
This year, we had two specialized television officials for the ILT20, each of whom officiated 17 matches. We had two video cameras in the box in addition to live communications to broadcast so that people could see and hear what they were doing. They managed to have the curious conversation with the pundit as well.
“To achieve the best results, it is imperative to pair the best individuals with the finest technology. This notion that the top match officials on the field are also the finest match officials on television needs to be disregarded. I believe that to be false. Before I became an umpire, I worked in the printing industry, and my best printer wasn’t my greatest foreman.”
Evidently, umpiring technology is not yet finished. Compared to other sports like football, which are regularly embroiled in disputes involving the Video Assistant Referee, cricket has handled the connection better thus far. On Sunday, Nottingham Forest lost 2-0 to Everton in the Premier League at Goodison Park after being refused what they believed to be three obvious penalties. In public, Forest claimed that Stuart Attwell, the VAR official, had backed Luton Town, a team that is also fighting to stay in the league. The manager of Forest, Nuno Espirito Santo, remarked, “We would start talking about conspiracy if we were in another country.” By football standards, Kohli’s pointless tirade is typical fare in cricket.
“We’re lucky that we have a lot more line decisions than most other sports,” Taufel stated. Even soccer is more technical than rugby. However, there is still a lot of… dispute, if you will. People have different perspectives on things, which is why I employ differences of opinion. When we discuss impediment or clean catches, we’re discussing deliberate intent or a definition.”
and communicating in a confident, trustworthy, transparent, and consistent manner.
