Fruit Machine Chat

Anybody else been watching International Cricket self-destruct on our TV screens this evening?

The West Indies have closed day 3 on 398/5 - with all five dismissals having been referred and given out LBW.

The problem is that the players and umpires now both seem to be abusing the system - the idea of introducing the system was to try and eliminate the problems of batsmen being given out when they CLEARLY should not have been, thus potentially altering the course of a match. Fine in principle, but it's not working out that way.

The teams should have just one referral per innings each. This way, if there is a CLEAR mistake made (ie. batsman hit the ball but was given out lbw, or batsman given not out caught bat/pad but he did hit the ball, etc), they will use it then and only then. Giving the teams more than one referral means that the fielding side have the opportunity to try and buy a wicket from a 50/50 decision where normally everyone would accept the Not Out decision and let the game go on.

All we've got at the moment is a system that undermines umpires, and puts them under ridiculous pressure - which is likely to lead to MORE mistakes, not less.

Can you imagine how painful this system will be midway through an intense Ashes test .. it doesn't bear thinking about.

This is 1 of the reasons why the FA won't allow video evidence to come in, because given the chance, people will abuse it.
Tennis have got it spot on IMO, I think it is, they get 3 challenges to a decision per match, so you use them very wisely.

Its three challenges per set. If they challenge successfully they keep their 3, everytime their challenge is unsuccessful they lose a challenge. They get an additional challenge if the set goes into a tie-break.

Even this gets abused to an extent by players making challenges when they blatantly knows the ball was out just to gain a bit of extra rest bite especially during the tie-break as they know their full allocation will be re-instated the very next set).

It is a fair and just way of settling things though.

The thing about the tennis referrals is that it is resulting in the players showing more respect for the officials, as there are now absolutely no arguments about line calls. If your the player and your so certain that the world and his umpires are against you, you challenge the call and then shut up when the replay proves you wrong.

In cricket, the referral system is encouraging fielding teams to challenge umpires when much of the time, there is very little basis for them to do so - and ultimately showing less respect for the officials. Reduce it to one referral per team and you won't have this problem.

No more referrals in Lahore. The crazies are out again shooting up the place.

More here :

http://www.sportinglife.com/cricket/new ... ction.html


Shocking.