Solution For Poor Umpiring Decisions.

As Sunil Gavaskar points out again and again in his commentaries and writings, in spite of the induction of 'neutral' umpires, the umpiring decisions seem to go more against India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka than against the other cricket playing nations. Gavaskar is surely the most qualified to talk on this subject as it was his act in trying to walk out of a Test match in Australia, dragging Chetan Chauhan with him, which shook up the cricketing world to the fact that the colonial 'white skin' umpires were just as bad as the 'brown skins' of the Indian subcontinent. Till then they used to point a finger at the poor umpiring standards in India and Pakistan while conveniently being blind to their own failures.


Now after the first day's play in Sydney with umpteen wrong decisions by 'neutral' umpires Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson, more against India than Australia, Steve Waugh wants to scrap the neutral umpire system and have only umpires from host countries, so that they can go back to their own cosy habit of favouring the host team. (Indian umpires unfortunately seem to have imbibed the Hindu dharma of 'Athithi Devo Bhava' and tend to be generous to visiting teams.)


However, it looks like the umpires, whether neutral or local, will continue to make mistakes, often quite unfair and costly to one team or the other. So there has to be some other way of countering this problem. I propose the following solution.


The only factor which governs the match is the number of runs. So the solution also should be in terms of runs. When a wrong decision is given in favour of the batsman, 50 runs should be debited from his side's total. And if a wrong decision is given against a batsman, 50 runs should be credited to his side's total. For example, in the current India vs Australia match in Sydney, so far Ponting was wrongly given 'Not Out' twice and was then given 'Out' also wrongly. So the Australain score should be reduced by 100 runs for the two wrong 'Not outs' and increased by 50 for the one wrong 'Out'. Then Symonds was given two 'Not outs' wrongly. So they should be penalised by 100 runs. That means Australia's first innings score should be reduced by 150 runs. That will make it 463 - 150 = 313. Looks like that will make the game fair for all.


Thanks very much for your applause for this solution.