SYDNEY – Cricket’s decision referral system is sapping the confidence of match officials and should be scrapped, according to former Australian test umpire Darrell Hair. The system, where decisions can be referred to an official who reviews the television pictures before passing his verdict on to the umpires, is making its World Cup debut in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
The controversial Hair, once described by former Pakistan captain Imran Khan as an “umpiring fundamentalist”, said the system was also encouraging youngsters playing junior cricket to question the decisions of umpires. “I cannot help wondering how much of a confidence dent will be left on some of our ICC umpires when they begin to continually have decisions overturned,” he wrote in the journal of the New South Wales Cricket Umpires and Scorers Association.
“During the Ashes series we even saw the farcical situation of umpires Billy Bowden and Aleem Dar, generally acknowledged as two of the best in the game, doubting their ability to correctly call a no-ball. “If the game is going to sap the confidence of umpires to that extent, where they cannot trust their own calls to be made on basic bread-and-butter decisions, then the system has failed them.” Hair said the governing International Cricket Council (ICC) should focus on working with umpires to ensure their decisions were correct on the majority of occasions.
“A review system by its very nature will uncover mistakes but management of why these mistakes occur in the first place should be the priority,” he added. “ICC should stop the rot and decay that will eat away at the core of the spirit of cricket — respect the role of the umpires and the games traditional values. Back the umpires and ditch the decision review system — it’s just not worth it.”
Hair, who umpired 78 tests between 1992 and 2008, was temporarily banned from officiating in 2006 after Pakistan became the first country to forfeit a match in more than a century of test cricket because of one of his decisions.
