Newsgroups: rec.sport.cricket
Subject: Re: English Umpiring, hello Rajeev
From: bnataraj@uceng.UC.EDU (Bhaskar  Natarajan)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 06:04:47 GMT
Organization: College of Engineering, University of Cincinnati

In article <9222615.27038@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz) writes:
>In <12AUG199214575827@vxcrna.cern.ch> hasan@vxcrna.cern.ch  writes:
>
>| What you are saying is that in case the wicket-
>| keeper or one of the fielders removes the bails after collecting a throw,
>| a batsman should be at least more than than two feet away from the crease
>| to be given out,
>
>No, of course not.  I didn't say anything of the kind.  How far
>could be, and still be given out will depend on all kinds of things.
>What really counts is the time between when the bails are removed
>and when the bat crosses the crease (on the ground) - if that's less
>than about 1/10th of a second there's no way the umpire should give
>it out.

I believe in something that can be called an umpiring decision by "instinct"
tho' i feel even that is not quite the word. It is something like you are 
watching the events leading to an appeal  ( lbw/run out/stumping/bat-pad) 
closely, and your 'instinctive' or  'intuitive' decision has been made, no
sooner the critical moment has passed. Like, i feel the umpire has formed a
decision before ANYONE can even think of appealing. I have done some 
umpiring myself (in minor weekend/vacation time tennis ball cricket matches,
for those of u from Bombay) and i have never faced any problem in arriving 
at decisions. My decisions were usually very prompt and i daresay, correct,
going by the reaction of everyone.( this includes both, YES and NO kind of
decisions) And just in case it sounds as if i am blowing my own trumpet, i
have seen others give very good and prompt decisions from vantage points on
the field.

What i dislike and suspect are late decisions, where you play over the 
incident in your mind, which is also fine except that by the time you start 
playing it back in your mind, the fielders are shouting their heads off
in appeal, and no matter how objective you try to be, your attention DOES
get diverted (even if a wee bit) from the mental play-back and you start 
feeling the pressure to soon give the decision. Now if you are REALLY a 
rational thinker, you will play back the incident again, but the intense
pressure of the appeal would have blurred things more than you would like 
to admit (and you as an umpire realize it) which makes the continuing 
appeal now sound very nasty indeed, and you think " damn! how i want to 
get out of this tangle ! " and you can ( and want to) hesitate no longer
and give again an 'instinctive' decision which is now not purely instinctive
in the sense that your mind is still confused. More often than not, this 
would be a "bad" decision.

I don't know what you guys feel about this theory of mine, but that is how
i felt when umpiring. What i wanted to say when i started off, is that there
need not be any limit like 1/10 th of a sec. for giving or not giving a 
batsman out. If you have been observing closely, this time would not be any 
barrier, and if on the other hand, you were not REALLY observing, no amount 
of time can convince you of your decision, which has to be "blind".

Just to test out my theory, Shamim, how long did it take the umpires to give
the decision in the Gooch and the Shepard incidents ?

-Bhaskar-