The crisis

So, cricket now has an umpiring crisis. With Simon Taufel set to consider "options" after his contract expires with the ICC and Darrell Hair, Rudi Koetzen and Steve Bucknor in the doghouse for various reasons, cricket finds itself with a dearth of "quality" umpires.

And I say, whats the big deal?

For the longest time now, cricket has had to live with very ordinary standards of umpiring.

People blame technology, but what about the over crowded cricket calenders, the minuscule pool of "Elite" umpires and the stress and fatigue of travel and officiating high pressure games, day in and day out?

The IPL has exacerbated this issue because, for the first time in a long time, the umpires, like the players, have options.

Options to make more money over a shorter duration of time. And while the stress levels may be the same or elevated, it will be over a very short span of time unlike in current circumstances.

I, for one, am glad that we have this crisis. For two reasons

1. Given the tugs and pulls of corporate driven tournaments, there will be a demand for high quality of officiating - if I have sunk in 40 million dollars in a bloody franchise and I get short changed because some duffer in a white/black coat muffs up, there will be hell to pay. Which means that there will be more accountability, transparency, technology and much higher standards when it comes to officiating.

2. The ICC has, in the past years, looked up to individual boards to supply umpires to constitute the Elite panel. There has been no push, and no investment, whatsoever to expand the panel and/or force individual Boards to provide a fixed number of umpires of a certain standard.

Hopefully, this crisis will force the ICC to introspect and hopefully, the IPL, because of what is at stake, will do everything possible to ensure that the standard of umpiring is right up there.

I expect to see a lot more gizmos and a lot more experiments to come in to aids umpires in the coming days. And I also expect greater number of people to take up umpiring because of the remuneration involved. And, if the ICC can be pro active about it, an expanded Elite umpires pool with a greater percentage of correct decisions per umpire rather than the standard "95% right across the board" bandied out by Dave Richardson.