Member Insights: Who’s in charge? Why tech can’t provide all the answers when it comes to officiating
July 5, 2023
In this week’s Member Insight piece, our Content Manager, Alex Brinton, looks into how, despite the many advances in technology that have helped officials, the power to make decisions must lie at a human’s door.
Don’t worry this isn’t going to turn into a rant about VAR and its use in football, but we will touch on that later. Instead, we start with a sport where technology in officiating isn’t new; it has been a part of the experience since 1992.
We start at Lord’s. Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few days you will have seen the controversial dismissal of England batsman Jonny Bairstow. For those few that haven’t, I will do my best to explain: Bairstow walked out of his crease at the end of an over and Australia’s wicketkeeper Alex Carey threw the ball at the stumps, hitting them with Bairstow yards out of his crease.
In the Laws of the game Bairstow was out, but cricket being cricket things are not that simple. There is another element to this which is the spirit of the game. What followed were some less than savoury scenes in the Lord’s pavilion with MCC members confronting the Australian players as they left the field.
Fury has erupted on both sides of the globe and has led to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak jumping in to support England while his Australian counterpart returned fire, telling Sunak to “stay in his crease”.
Could a controversial stumping lead to an Australian republic?
What could have stopped all this? Well the Aussie skipper, Pat Cummins, could have retracted his appeal, but you can’t blame him for not. But for me the fault lies with the umpires. They could have defused the situation very easily by deciding the ball was ‘dead’ because it was the last ball of the over. As England captain Ben Stokes pointed out, they had begun to move to their positions ready for the next over..
For me, this comes back to the fact that cricket umpires at the highest level have become overly dependent on technology to help in the decision-making process, and lack the confidence to make the common sense, human decisions that they are still needed for. It is almost like they have had the power of independent thought removed and now find themselves shying away from tough decisions.
Run outs are a great example of this. Some run outs are close and need to be checked, using technology, by the third umpire – this I have no problem with. But over the last few years the umpires have become so scared of making a decision they push the responsibility onto the technology everytime, no matter how far out the batter is.
That does mean that they are all correct (which seems an odd thing to moan about) but it leads to this over reliance on technology that has caused problems such as Sunday’s Lord’s stumping. Officiating needs a human touch, in some respects cricket has lost that, and I am desperate for other sports not to go the same way.
VAR. Yes, we were always going to get to VAR eventually weren’t we? It is a struggle to get through a Premier League weekend without some controversy around it, but it is working and we are seeing more correct decisions which is a win for everyone. I do think that while the rules around offsides are not great and we all hate it when they start drawing the dreaded lines on the screen, they do seem to work more of the time then not.
But football officiating is so often subjective and at the moment referees are often sympathetic to the rhythms of the game and different referees have different styles. It is what makes the role of tech in decision making a difficult one. This is where I think we need to be careful and make sure our referees keep their independence and autonomy.
Tennis is another sport where tech plays a massive role in the decision-making process. Hawk-Eye has become a big part of the game and the way players use their challenges is a real artform. Thanks to line-judges and the technology, the umpire now occupies a position of managing the players and using his or her experience and common sense to make sure the game runs as smoothly as possible. Admittedly, when Nick Kyrgios is on court that can be pretty challenging.
There are some things humans can do that just can’t be substituted by any sort of technology so refereeing jobs are safe for now.
Photo credit: Ben Sutherland
