The DRS should Eliminate Howlers. And Those Alone

By Vineet Goyal

Much has been written and debated about the effectiveness of DRS and it is fair to say that the jury is still out. Recent comments from Jacques Kallis are a good indication that the majority of players are not entirely comfortable with the system. However, most agree it is quite effective in eliminating blatant errors and the game is better off with some sort of DRS in place. Eliminating howlers was in fact the primary intended purpose of the system. So why is there still opposition to the system if it serves its primary intended purpose so well.

The answer lies in not what it does but in what it does not do effectively. It is completely ineffective in marginal decisions – the current technology used in DRS especially for predicting the trajectory of the ball in an lbw decision is not accurate enough for players and administrators to feel confident. But marginal decisions! No one was worried about those anyway – at least not the players. All we wanted was to eliminate the howlers for which DRS seems to work quite well. The problem however is that once the system is in place, we cannot ask the players to use it only in cases of a howler. The players realize that the technological shortcomings of the system can be exploited and therefore, they can use the DRS strategically to get a decision in their favor. This is very discomforting from everyone’s perspective.

The objective of DRS should instead be to eliminate howlers and just that. It would be futile to formally define a howler but in principle from the perspective of the batsman, we can think of a howler as a decision where the batsman feels (in his mind) that grave injustice has been done to him in giving him out. Now, an lbw decision where the ball was perhaps just hitting the top of middle stump is not a howler (assuming there was no inside edge and impact was inside the line of stumps) – in this case, a batsman would be disappointed but in his heart knows that he was beaten and perhaps out. Clearly, we cannot have a system where by rule the players can ask for a review only in case of a howler. This should happen by design. Here is a proposal that I feel should achieve this:

1. The batting team is allowed only ONE unsuccessful review for both the innings.
2. The bowling team is allowed two unsuccessful reviews per inning as in the current system.

The asymmetry in batting and bowling reviews is because of the asymmetry in knowledge between batsman and bowler. The batsman knows whether he nicked the ball almost surely but the bowler may not. 

So lets see how this system would play out. A batsman will review only if he is absolutely sure that he is not out. Except lbw decisions, the batsman knows whether he is out or not. Anyone who has played cricket would know that you feel the vibrations from the faintest of nicks and you know it. If the batsman didn’t edge the ball and is given out, the review will certainly reverse the decision – none of the technologies including hot-spot and snicko give a false positive. So non-lbw decisions will be ruled correctly. 

It is a bit more trickier for the lbw decisions because the batsman does not know whether the ball was going to hit the stumps or even whether the impact was in line or not. It’s amazing to see the performance of umpires on the elite panel currently – even the players would testify that the umpires are extremely accurate about things like estimated path of the ball and line of impact. Of course, they are humans and making real-time decisions, so they are bound to make marginal errors of a millimeter here and there. And I think the players are ok with such errors. If Kallis is beaten to an incoming delivery that is crashing onto the middle stump and hits him a millimeter outside the off-stump, I don’t think he will feel cheated if he is given out. The howlers in lbw decisions happen (at least these days) when batsman are given out after an inside edge which is easy for batsman to detect and then review. But since batsmen have only one unsuccessful review for two innings, they will not review marginal decisions.

What about the bowling team? Can they use it for marginal decisions? Since there are two unsuccessful reviews allowed, they might like it happens in the current system. However, this should not be a problem. This system does not produce false positives, i.e., if the batsman did not edge, there will be no hot-spot. So if the batsman is indeed not out, the system would rarely reverse the on-field not-out call. However, in case of a blatant error, the decision is reversed. Therefore, the DRS essentially comes into play only in blatant errors and has no impact in marginal decisions.

Alcohol and the Jesse Ryder Assault Case

My article at The Cordon last week on the Jesse Ryder assault casesparked some strong critical responses (mainly on Twitter). These roughly amounted to the following:

1. That I had blamed Jesse Ryder for the attack, thus blaming the victim of a seemingly almost-fatal assault.
2. That I was wrong to speculate or conjecture about what had happened that night, wrong to offer an opinion on what might have happened. This criticism is related to the one that I was wrong to be offering any sort of commentary on a man who had been the victim of a beating.
3. That I am a puritan about alcohol, who thinks alcohol causes violence, that it was the sole cause of the incident that night.

First, I reject the canard that I was blaming Jesse Ryder for the attack. Nowhere in my post do I suggest that Ryder’s drinking in particular caused the fight, that he started the fight, that he was drunk, that he was to blame. Describing the incident as alcohol-related does not mean blaming Jesse Ryder. Indeed, in my post, I suggested Ryder might even have been picked on by his attackers. That is, he might have been harassed by his attackers, who knowing Ryder’s past, made offensive remarks pertaining to that. My critics should acknowledge though, that even if Ryder had been stone cold sober and not drinking—though we have been told he was—and had been attacked by a pair of drunks, this would have been an alcohol-related incident. More importantly, you do not have to be drunk to get into an alcohol-related fight; you simply need to have your tongue loosened up a bit. That is all that is needed to implicate alcohol in this incident.

I will admit the use of the word ‘everything’—in the title of my post and then again later in the post itself--was unfortunate. I meant it as a rhetorical flourish in response to the NZCPA and police statement, along the lines of ‘Whaddya mean this had nothing to do with alcohol?! This had everything to do with alcohol!’ By using ‘everything’ I made it seem as if alcohol was the sole cause of the attack, but all I meant to say was the news made it seem very likely alcohol was causally implicated in the attack on Ryder, that it was a contributing factor. (Note my use of ‘likely’; I will return to this soon enough.) But nowhere in my post did I say alcoholcauses violence; I merely pointed out a correlation between alcohol consumption and violence. This correlation is visible to most: bar brawls, fights in sports stadiums late in the afternoon (there is a reason why, beyond worries about drunk driving, beer sales cease in the late afternoon at many cricket grounds), domestic violence cases etc. A simple googling of ‘alcohol related violence’ throws up a wealth of links which note the correlation between alcohol and violence, such as this one, which links to many studies conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Social workers, policemen, women’s shelter workers know about this correlation; I took this to be a cultural commonplace, one that warranted my claim that the Ryder assault—especially because of its location and timing--was alcohol-related, but many assumed I was saying one drink turns you into a maniac, that alcohol invariably leads to violence. But that claim was not made by me and neither was it needed to make the case that I did. (Incidentally, those suggesting I am a puritan about alcohol are wildly off the mark. I enjoy wine and beer and whiskey; I go on wine-tasting vacations; I make road-trips to visit my favorite craft breweries; like any middle-class aspirant to the good life, I try to talk knowledgeably about the single-malt whiskies I enjoy: ‘Laphroaig? Pshaw! Too peaty!’).

On a related note, though I did not explicitly and extensively indict masculinity in my original post, I did note in my invocation of the Martian anthropologist that it is the ‘males of the species’ who might brawl after drinking. It is the combination of a misguided masculinity and the inhibitions loosened by alcohol that often contribute to post-alcohol consumption violence. Both these factors make it possible for me to make the following claim: if you hear two men have been in a fight in a bar, it is reasonable to infer/speculate/conjecture/assume/hypothesize that alcohol was involved. I do not need, at this stage, to rely on the additional datum—as in this case--that one of them has a prior history of similar incidents. The mere reporting of the first is enough to warrant the drawing of that conclusion.

This brings me to the criticism directed at my ‘speculating’ or ‘conjecturing’ about what happened that fateful night. Many commentators wrote as if speculating or conjecturing about unseen, but reported on, and incompletely known, events was probably the worst sin a blogger could commit. To that, there are two responses. First, my piece was not reportage. It was an opinion piece. I was not writing as a beat reporter but as a blogger responding to a news item; this sort of opinion piece, consisting of speculative commentary, the plausibility of which can be judged by readers and responded to critically, is perfectly appropriate. I was writing to express my considered belief—my opinion--on what happened that night. People reading my opinions are free to critique the process by which I reached those conclusions or to point me to additional evidence that might affect my beliefs, and thus, perhaps, to show why conclusions were not warranted. It is no argument, however, to command an opinion writer, ‘Thou shalt not speculate!’ A blanket ban on speculative commentary by opinion writers – like, for instance, on those who speculate on what went on behind closed doors at a deliberation of Supreme Court judges before they delivered their ruling - thus ruling out the inverse of a species of commentary called ‘reading the tea leaves’, would be far too restrictive. If it’s OK for opinion writers to speculate about what might happen in the future, then why not about the past? I formed the beliefs that formed the basis of my post on the basis of the evidence I had. I have been accused of not being diligent enough in my evidence collection, but even after reading additional news reports my hypothesis about what happened that night remains the same as before. I do not think Ryder was the victim of a premeditated, conspiratorial assault; the facts still seem to point to an edgy, alcohol-infused encounter having gone wrong. It is far more plausible to infer this and indeed, to continue to not blame Ryder, than to assume that there was a conspiracy to attack Ryder, that the assault was planned.

Furthermore, I hate to break the news to those who accused me of ‘speculation’ and ‘conjecture’, who, possessed by a spirit of epistemic rectitude, have suggested that we should sit on our hands and not form any beliefs till ‘all the facts are in’: much of our daily reasoning consists precisely of speculation, conjecture, guessing, hypothesizing, and so on – and thus, offer opinions about all sorts of matters based on this. We constantly form beliefs on the basis of incomplete evidence; if we were to continue to wait until all the facts were in we would never form any beliefs. There are, of course, good variants of that activity and there are bad variants of that activity. This is why it is silly to assume Martians have landed when you see a broken window in your apartment but far more reasonable to conjecture that the neighbor’s kids have been playing pranks again. I happened to think my conjecture was a good one, which is why I wrote the post I did. Here is why: I heard a fight had taken place in a bar, that there were men involved. I reacted on the basis of prior beliefs that bars have often served as venues for brawls, that the intersection of masculinity and alcohol—as bar bouncers and visitors to Yankees games and the SCG in the old days will testify—lies quite often in violence. That was the basis of my reaction. 

Third, many accused me of poor taste in writing about a man who had been attacked and was near death. But Ryder is a public figure; what happens to him makes news; responding to that news is perfectly appropriate for bloggers and journalists. If Ryder had been a completely obscure person, living his life out of the public eye, presumably the news of his assault would not have made the news and there would have been no press conferences or newspaper articles on his health (and indeed, neither would anyone care he had ever gotten into a brawl in a bar previously). And of course, once news of the attack broke, there was plenty of commentary—about Ryder, his past, his career, his character--in any case. So apparently, it is acceptable to write about a near-dead man so long as you write the ‘appropriate’ things, that all one should do when confronted with news about a public figure is offer bromides and wallow in agnosticism, scrupulously refusing to draw any inferences from the news presented to us. When Christopher Hitchens died last year, many commentators,including myself, wrote articles where we detailed our disagreements with that rhetorical pugilist. Predictably, there were those who suggested that these writings were in poor taste, that one should not speak ill of the dead. This fastidiousness about the dead or the injured public figure is curious; it seems to find its grounding in a misunderstanding about the nature of public discourse, which is not circumscribed in the ways my interlocutors might want. (What Glenn Greenwald wrote in response to the commentary on Hitchens’ death applies to those who would critique my writing about an injured public figure as well.) 

Importantly, in Ryder’s case, it was only because of his public past indiscretions that the need was felt for the clarification offered by the NZCPA and the police (one made, we should note, without all the facts being in, for after all, they did not have Ryder’s testimony at that point in time, and indeed, as seems likely now, will never have). So, again, why the restrictions on commentary on that statement? Why is it not acceptable for an opinion writer to respond to a public statement about a public figure?

In closing let me repeat something I have already stated above: the next time I hear about a fight between two men in a bar, I will speculate, assume, conjecture, hypothesize, abduce that alcohol was involved. It is a reasonable inference to draw and unless the ground facts about masculinity and alcohol change I will continue to draw that inference in the future. It is not an unreasonable inference to make. If you think it is, please state your argument, one that does not rely on arbitrarily circumscribing public commentary or a misplaced fastidiousness about public discourse on public figures. I stated mine in my original post and have reiterated it above. My readers are, of course, welcome to simply remain agnostic and suspend belief till the facts are in. They might be surprised at how difficult genuine agnosticism actually is.

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PCB election meets ICC requirements - Ashraf

Source By ESPNcricinfo

Zaka Ashraf was endorsed by ten elected members of the PCB's Board of Governors © ESPN

The PCB has admitted that the endorsement of Zaka Ashraf for next four years as chairman was processed through a "representation process" and not purely a democratic process, but said it complied with the ICC's recommendations. According to the amended constitution, the chairman is still a nominated candidate, though one who is "endorsed" by ten elected members in the Board of Governors.

In 2011, the ICC stipulated that its member boards become autonomous and free of interference from governments by June 2013. Removal of government interference had also been one of the Woolf report recommendations approved by the ICC.

The PCB's 2007 constitution was then amended to change the method of appointing the board's chairman and alter the structure of its governing board. However, the process is still complicated, and the president of Pakistan, who is the patron of the PCB, retains a central role in appointing the chairman. Ashraf defended the transition as "fair and transparent to prevent a malicious candidate to step up to take the office".

"The new constitution complies with the recommendations made by the ICC and has been accepted, appreciated and welcomed by the ICC," Ashraf told a press conference at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore. "It has been a much-needed transition and a necessary step in ensuring the development and better administration of the game of cricket. The key features of the constitution were also discussed individually with the ICC president and CEO and it fulfills the requirements of parameters laid down by them. The PCB is fully compliant."

The PCB has been criticised in the past because its constitution allowed the chairman almost dictatorial powers. The amended constitution hasn't changed that. The chairman can control and oversee income and expenditure in accordance with the budget approved by the board of governors. The major shortcoming in the new constitution is that the chairman has ultimate power with no recourse to remove him from the post in any circumstances. Also, the incumbent can be nominated for more than one term.

"The new constitution entrusts the board of governors [BoG] with greater responsibility and the power to make regulations for the better governance of the PCB. Previously, most rules had to be approved by the federal government," said Ashraf who insisted that "the constitution has been followed in letter and spirit and the PCB chairman has been appointed through the process defined in the constitution."

The restructured 14-member body includes five elected regional representatives picked on a rotation basis and five elected representatives of service organisations and departments who have the power of endorsement to the nominated chairman. The regions whose representatives accepted Ashraf's nomination were: Peshawar, Islamabad, Larkana and Dera Murad Jamali while the fifth spot is yet to be filled. Punjab - which has 60% of Pakistan's population - doesn't have a representative in the BoG as Ashraf said the regions within Punjab hadn't completed their own elections yet.

The transition, however, was surprising and conducted secretly with the PCB revealing the appointment through a press release, citing it as an internal matter and not a public one. "This is a representative process, that's why the word nominated as per process has been used (in the constitution)," explained the PCB solicitor, Taffazul Rizvi. "There are certain criteria which are defined in the constitution and the word democracy has a wide range. The PCB election is different from the way general elections are conducted."

It is understood that with the general election due on Saturday, a new government could bring in a change in PCB hierarchy. With his future as chairman uncertain, Ashraf implemented the new constitution and was eventually elected for a new term.

"We had to implement the new constitution to meet the deadline given by ICC," said Ashraf, to justify the abrupt move 72 hours before the general election in the country. "It was expected and we were already working on it from last many months. We didn't want to delay it, we have to have the new constitution in place before June to satisfy the ICC requirement."

On the UDRS debate

The BCCI is the last line of defense that the game of cricket has to protect it from being saddled with a very bad technology solution to the problem of improving umpiring decisions. The reasons for BCCI's opposition to the use of Umpires Decision Review System (UDRS) probably do not form a coherent whole - they range from contractual problems with TV Broadcasters, to the discomfort of a few players (mainly Tendulkar) with the idea of players having to ask for a review. But nevertheless they reveal a discomfort that ought to be taken seriously in my view. Everytime there is a situation where an Umpiring decision is seen to be mistaken in a series where UDRS is not in use (Mohali being the obvious case in point), it is automatically seen as a case which make the necessity of the UDRS blindingly obvious.



This isn't the case in my view. The UDRS is a technology of adjudication. It comprises not just of Hawkeye or HotSpot or Snickometer - each of which has been shown to be fallible (and not foolproof), but of the Umpires on the field, the Umpire the Pavilion, the fielding captain, the batsmen and the protocols of communication between them. If we go by the basic definition of a technology - it is the knowledge of using or applying a tool or technique to a given problem, and not by the common usage of the term, in which "technology" refers to only the non-human parts of the apparatus, it is inescapable that the human and non-human parts of this apparatus constitute each other in addition to constituting the system as a whole. So the video replay, or the hawkeye or hotspot or snickometer simulations are as good as the communication protocol regime in which they are used. The extent of their fallibility depends on this.

Is Hawkeye essential for the LBW decision? Are we making more accurate LBW decisions thanks to a simulation which has it's problems - both computational and representational? The answer to this question is a complicated one, and in my view, it is that if we want to believe that we are making more accurate decisions, then yes, we are. But there is nothing inherently more accurate about Hawkeye based LBW decisions. The 'accuracy' LBW decision has a history. The instrumental definition of the LBW law which lists a finite checklist of criteria does not totally define the LBW law, because it's implementation has been dependent on the tradition of umpiring on view in a given game. The great English Umpire Harold 'Dickie' Bird, for example was a renowned "not-outer", especially towards the end of his career. He was not wrong, he just interpreted the benefit-of-doubt more generously in favor of the batsman. The great present-day Umpire, Simon Taufel of Australia, is decidedly more generous to bowlers. In general, Umpires have become far more likely to give LBWs on the front foot. This has changed batting techniques, especially against spin bowling.

The UDRS-supported LBW decision will not therefore be more accurate than the old decisions, it will merely shift the location of the conjecture involved in the decision. But in what direction will this shift take place? This is where the most problematic aspect of the UDRS comes to surface in my view.

Lets consider a situation and apply the UDRS to it. It's the 4th morning of a Test Match. The not out batsmen at the start of play in the third innings are the number 4 batsman, and a nightwatchman. The score is 55/3. At the stroke of the first drinks break, the nightwatchman pads up to an offbreak that hits him marginally outside off stump, on the knee roll. He's forward, but not fully so, the way tailenders tend to be when they're uncertain of the length. The ball has been turning sharply out of the rough for the first 50 minutes of the morning session up to this delivery. The Umpire gives the nightwatchman out. The nightwatchman is 6ft tall, and both he and the nonstriker feel that the Umpire's decision was a bold one. But, the batting side have already used up one review, and are wondering whether it is worth using up another. They decide not to. The Hawkeye simulation shows the ball to be just missing the outer corner of leg stump by a whisker. But, since there was no review, the Umpire's original conjecture about the trajectory of the ball stands.

So what was the LBW based on in this instance? At least 4 distinct bits of judgment - the Umpire's judgment, the non-striker's judgment, the batting team's judgment of the match situation, hawkeye's judgment of the flight of the ball. The original decision was marginal, and even though Hawkeye showed the ball to be missing leg-stump by the slimmest possible margin, it's hard to be certain that the Umpire was in fact wrong. Would the decision have been overturned on review? Yes, since the ball was shown to be missing. If you opted for a more lenient margin of error, then probably No, because then the on-field call would have stood.

The UDRS in this instance would add nothing to quality of the umpire's decision, despite introduce multiple additional judgments to the process. The economy of the review has it's own by-products - the most disturbing of these being the tactical use of the review by teams. The tactical use of the review also brings home the issue of marginal decisions being overturned, for no reason other than the fact that a side decided to ask for a review. The UDRS defines the marginal decision very narrowly in actual fact - in the case of the LBW, this is limited to the margin of error in Hawkeye. It also complicates the marginal decision by removing it from being the sole prerogative of the Umpire, to making players complicit in it. There is no place for this complication in the rhetoric of accuracy which is used to market the UDRS (see Ricky Ponting and Virender Sehwag's comments in favor of UDRS at Mohali)

The UDRS is a technology of adjudication, but evidence shows that it is a deeply problematic technology of adjudication. What new information do the players bring to the situation? Limiting the reviews to two is a pyrrhic solution to a problem of UDRS's own making - the fear that teams might bring the game to a grinding halt by questioning everything that goes against them. If it is really a matter of teams using it well, then is it also not introducing a new element to the contest? Does cricket want cricketers to now also be experts at questioning the umpire's decision? If it is put this way, I think most players would be horrified, even after some reflection. It is never put this way.

As a technology then, UDRS's problem is that it has too many moving parts, too many competing interests. What might a simpler system look like? One of the most underestimated aspects of the UDRS is the communication protocols it sets up. Players can initiate a review, even though they don't always have good information. The third umpire, the one entity in the entire apparatus who is information-rich - on three important counts - he's an expert as an umpire, he has video equipment at his disposal, and he has the expertise to interpret what he sees intelligently and come to a conclusion, is not allowed to initiate anything. The on-field umpire is not allowed to initiate an inquiry under UDRS, but is allowed to do so under other circumstances.

A simpler situation might involve on the On-field Umpires and the Third Umpire. Both would have the ability to initiate communication about a decision (either out or not-out). The Third Umpire is best placed to determine whether an on-field decision was marginal (in which case he will not interfere) or reasonably certainly disputable (in which case he will). There are fewer moving parts here, and no conflicts of interest on account of the match situation. A possible protocol would run as follows.

1. The fielding side makes an appeal.
2. The umpire on the field, as usual, makes judgment as to the merit of the appeal. If he's sure, he gives it Out or Not Out.
3. The TV Umpire is simultaneously looking at it, trying to determine whether one of the following three applies: (a) the umpire is clearly right, (b) the decision is marginal or (c) the umpire is clearly wrong.
4. If it is (c), the TV Umpire can point this out to the on-field umpire, who can reverse his decision. If it is (a) or (b), he does nothing.
5. If the Umpire on the field is unsure, for example about an inside edge - it looks like a good LBW shout, but for this doubt, he could make a provisional decision, and then consult the TV Umpire to either consult or reverse his decision.

This is a better way to separate the marginal decisions from the obvious errors. This separation is a crucial (even central) problem that has to be addressed in any technology of adjudication, and the UDRS only addresses it in a very cumbersome, roundabout way by setting up an economy of reviews.

There's no necessity for these decisions to be communicated through the big screens - wireless communications are sufficiently advanced for the umpires to communicate directly in a very reliable way. This way, broadcasters will not be able to waste time building up suspense through gratuitous graphics which end with "Out" or "Not Out". It will also withdraw the batsman right to appeal, and limit the fielding side to asking the question only once. It will eliminate the tactical economy of the review system.

The UDRS is facing resistance not just for contractual reasons (Existing contracts between broadcasters and individual host boards will have to be revised to accomodate UDRS), but also because it is unnecessarily complicated technological solution to the problem. The ICC would still have to mandate what software technology should be available to the Umpires. This is a separate problem, one that UDRS does not address. The UDRS is not going to produce more accurate umpiring decisions. It may correct some obvious errors within it's limitations (2 reviews etc.), but it will also radically reconstruct the way decisions are made on the cricket field, and radically relocate authority.

It is time for the ICC to take the resistance to the UDRS seriously, and not merely condemn it as contractual intransigence or technophobia. There are simpler solutions available. The BCCI, possibly unintentionally, is doing the game a great service by resisting UDRS. Now it needs to take the next step and constructively propose something simpler.

Umpires Need To Reassert Their Authority

Despite the fact that the few problems with umpiring in the Ashes so far have had to do with the rules of the decision review system, its the umpires who have gotten the bulk of the criticism. It is always more satisfying to blame a human being than a disembodied system. It is also usually wrong. Now it has extended to players expressing dissatisfaction with the umpiring in print in the middle of a Test Match. James Anderson says nothing new in his Daily Mail column, offers nothing that has been suggested many times before. He has simply added his voice to the entirely unaccountable echo chamber of abuse that the Umpires have to put up with increasingly often. I would encourage all of you to watch just the final couple of sessions of the Edgbaston Test of 2005, and then try to imagine the hue and cry that would have followed if the current level of hysteria about umpiring mistakes were around in 2005. The final Australian wicket was not out according to the rules. There was also a very very close LBW shout that wasn't given by umpire Bowden about 10 overs before the end of the match.

DRS has made cricket fans and players less tolerant of the odd incorrect umpiring decision. It has made professional observers - commentators, writers, journalists - and fans on social media increasingly numb to the nuances of marginal decisions. In the nonsensical partisan world of cricket observer every decision that goes against one's team is "diabolical" or "a howler". Most people don't understand the difference between LBW as a mode of dismissal and other modes of dismissal. What is most frustrating (if I am borrow a favorite phrase of the contemporary English Test player) is that observers today often point out that an appeal is "close", but then completely ignore this fact when they offer their final word on a decision. Michael Atherton is one honorable exception here. Partisanship, and perhaps even just the desire to shout louder than others seems to make logical consistency optional. Yet, these people seem to lack self awareness to such an extent that they seem oblivious to such inconsistencies. And these are not children we are talking about, these are educated grown ups.

If Umpires are to survive in cricket, they have to be above the fray. Umpiring decisions cannot be a negotiation between players and umpires. Today the center of the cricket broadcast - the commentary box, whose influence in contemporary cricket is vastly underrated, cannot be allowed to be the arbiter of virtue, quality or reality. The opinion of the former cricketer peddling completely unaccountable, no-consequence bullshit in the commentary box or newspaper column has to be seen to be just that. The authority of the Umpire has to be respected, especially when he makes the odd mistake. When James Anderson writes that "taking wickets can be hard work and it is frustrating when something you think you have earned is taken away from you through no fault of your own." one is not quite sure what to make of it. Yes of course it's frustrating. But thats part of being a sportsman. It is part of the sporting character to accept decisions. But lets not pick on England. India have been guilty of this too.

After his retirement, Australian umpire Daryl Harper spoke out about his final Test match as an Umpire at Sabina Park in 2011. His comments offer perhaps the most candid view from an Umpire's frustrations with the prevalent setup.

"Three players were reported, and that's above average. Two of them came into the umpire's room afterwards, and they realised they were wrong in what they'd done," Harper said. "They both apologised profusely, they were humbled, they came in and they expressed their disappointment with their actions, they didn't avoid the issue, they owned up.

"One, Darren Sammy, was reprimanded; Ravi Rampaul was fined 10% of his match fee, and those boys were apologetic. In the other case, the first player reported was Amit Mishra, and even on the fourth day of the game he was still adamant that he'd got a bad decision.

"That couldn't be confirmed either way by replays … but regardless of where it came from, for my money that guy missed the point. There's no code of conduct for good decisions or bad decisions. The code of conduct is there to test out the strength of character, and on that occasion his character failed to respond in the appropriate way, and four days later he still hadn't worked out that he'd breached the code of conduct and thought he was quite justified.

"For me that's very sad, and shows a total lack of [a grasp of] what the spirit of cricket is all about."

Harper's point about Mishra applies just as well to James Anderson and every other player who has recently complained publicly about umpiring, not just to dissent on the field of play.

Umpires need to reassert their authority by aggressively reporting players for violations of the Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct is currently written broadly and columns like Anderson's could easily fall under the Code's catch all clauses. Even if the Umpires don't get a penalty, they should at least force players to face a hearing. If it is indeed the players job to play and the umpires job to umpire (as the oft repeated argument against walking goes), then comments like Anderson's in the middle of a Test Match are at odds with this dictum.

Part of accepting umpiring' decisions involves keeping one's frustrations about them to oneself. If the players don't understand this, then it is up the Umpires to make it clear to them. I hope they do so soon for their own sake.