Referring the umpire and baseball stats

dcsiva — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:43:00 GMT

Kartikeya spots a telling moment during the recent IPL game between Rajasthan and Delhi, as umpire Steve Davis appears to have been pushed into a referral to the third umpire on a run out decision by the Delhi fielders:

I have been critical of the IPL for granting Farokh Engineer the authority to officially rebuke an Umpire, although i am in a minority on this one - most people don't seem to think of it as a non-trivial event, inspite of the obviously unprecedented realignment of authority among match officials that it represents.
On this occasion though, Rudi Koertzen is again the Umpire at the other end, but the Umpire in question is a former Test Umpire from Australia - Steve Davis. What will the IPL do?

And Gulu Ezekiel lists a number of other ways in which he thinks IPL changes are ominous:

Even this season, with the salary cap in place, there were murmurs of protest among Australian, West Indian and New Zealand players, who had to leave the IPL early on for national duty. No doubt some of them would have been happier not to get selected for their country so that they could stay on and make hay in the IPL.

The temptation will be even greater for both players and coaches to ditch their nations once the cap goes. Already New Zealand coach John Bracewell has indicated he will soon step down with an eye on the IPL.

...

There has also been the farcical situation in the IPL where umpires' and Match Referees' actions are being called into question. So who will police the police?

That is not all. A Chennai newspaper has questioned the credibility of the drug testing procedures of the IPL. This is a serious issue that needs explaining by their head honchos.

Finally David Barry, following up on a previous post, looks at the kinds of analyses being done with the publicly available Hawkeye-type data available in Major League Baseball.

Engineered out?

dcsiva — Sat, 03 May 2008 14:28:00 GMT

Farookh Engineer is possibly in trouble too. First the players, then the umpires, and now the match referees? Ottayan reports on the details:

Unfortunately, he seems to have landed himself in trouble for suggesting that the BCCI needed to be lenient on Harbhajan Singh and for making comments on S.Sreesanth.

Reports suggest that his comments are unwelcome and Lalit Modi is making threatening noises that his comments plus his attire, he was seen wearing the RC team’s uniform, will be investigated.

Saloni Rana has the inside track on the second big controversy. First, Warne was pressured to not file an official complaint, and second, bizarrely:

But Lalit Modi while speaking the media in Jaipur stated that match referee has slapped a fine of 10% match fee to both the parties concerned in the matter and umpire has been handed one match ban.

When DreamCricket got in touch with the match referee he was surprised to hear about Mr. Modi’s comments on Warne being fined and added that; ‘I believe Shane Warne has not done anything wrong and I have just fined Ganguly and handed a match ban to the umpire’.

Meanwhile, the BCCI wants to set up counselling for Indian cricket players:

A top BCCI official told HT that a 24-hour counselling hotline, on the lines of professional cricketers in England, was not out of the question, but it was something they would have to think about carefully, keeping cultural differences in mind. “We recognise the need to educate our cricketers in aspects of life other than cricket,” BCCI Chief Administrative Officer Prof Ratnakar Shetty told HT.

“Punishment is not a solution in the long-run, education and sensitive counseling is,” he said. “We need them to develop holistically, help them grow as people, have normal inter-personal relationships, cope with the demands of being in the public eye and media scrutiny from a young age, and deal with the huge money they earn from the ages of 19-20.”

Cover Points : match referee

Referring the umpire and baseball stats

Engineered out?