Accepting the umpire’s decision becoming a dated concept

An ugly incident of dissent in a Perth cricket match exemplifies a growing sense of behavioural problems from the top level and filtering down, of players less inhibited and umpires more intimidated.

Players from the Bayswater-Morley Cricket Club remonstrate with the umpire after a decision goes against them in a Perth grade game against Mount Lawley

It’s a peaceful day last month at Perth’s picturesque Hillcrest Park. Mount Lawley CC is chasing 201 in their local derby against Bayswater-Morley CC. The batsman throws the bat at a wide one. The bowler and fielders go up. The umpire’s finger stays down. It doesn’t stop there.

On an MP4 in circulation since, extracted from a livestream of the match, you can watch as Bayswater turn on a collective histrionic fit.

A jagged cordon stares in disbelief at umpire Andrew Edwards — who happens to be standing in his maiden first-grade game. Mid-on, who has sprinted in, throws himself on the ground, like a toddler. The cover fieldsman spreads his arms petulantly, then holds his hands to his face in mock horror. The choreography does not even cease when over is called.

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Last week, my colleague Peter Lalor published in these pages a calm and measured commentary on displays of protracted dissent in the last Sheffield Shield round by Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne, and also evidence of lessons unlearned.

Australian captain Tim Paine, who swore at an umpire during the Boxing Day Test, made plain his displeasure at a decision in the same round.

Eighteen months ago, erstwhile vice-captain Mitchell Marsh was fined $5000 for dissent in a tour match in England; last month he was fined the same amount for the same sin in the Big Bash League in Canberra.

The response to Peter’s article was instructive. There were usual expressions of disgust, frustration and chagrin, standard in the circumstances.

Ian Chapell, typically, got it right. He had also noted players, including Smith and Labuschagne, “taking an inordinate time to leave the crease when they get out”; his message: “when you’re given out, get on your bike and get on your bike real quick”.

Yet there were also bleats of media-beat-up/leave-the-boys-alone/we-don’t-want-robots etc, mainly from that circle of sycophants who around top cricketers behave like Joe Hockey in proximity to Donald Trump.

One cretin argued that the dissents of Smith and Labuschagne somehow substantiated their greatness, proving “how much it meant to them”, because he’d once seen Allan Border behave “no better”.

Seriously? So what about the overwhelming proportion of male players, and basically all female players, who do cope with misfortune? Are they inferior? Does it mean less to them?

And while cricket is replete with accidents and setbacks, you don’t see players shaking their heads and/or throwing themselves on the ground in the event of a dropped catch. Why is it umpiring decisions for which such petulance is reserved?

Australian Test captain Tim Paine speaks with umpire Paul Reiffel during the recent India Test series. Picture: Getty Images

Of course, the issue is wider and deeper, and the aforementioned incident in Perth is unexpectedly informative.

Dissent, unfortunately, is on an upward slant in Perth premier cricket: there’s a growing sense of a problem from behaviours at the top level filtering down, of players less inhibited and umpires more intimidated. After all, who wants to be the killjoy who reports a guy and forces everyone to give up Wednesday night to a tribunal hearing?

In this match, nobody. One can understand the reticence of first-gamer Edwards. Yet his partner Matthew Hall is not only a 300-game district umpire but works for Cricket Australia; he and Sean Easey are the umpires and referees selectors.

So, apparently, an official who helps pick umpires in our elite cricket saw nothing amiss with Bayswater’s behaviour. What do they say about the standard you walk past?

At the very least, this demonstrates the difficulty of generalising about standards of cricket behaviour.

Australia is notorious for a positivist approach, throwing everything back on officials: no reports, no worries.

But remember “the line”, that everyone used to talk of, but that somehow nobody crossed? Until, three years ago in Cape Town, Australian cricket tripped over it, and there was hell to pay. What in the end we were forced to penalise was an outcome of what we had condoned.

This brings us to the administrators, who can’t escape responsibility for the changed dynamic in this generation between umpires and players.

Umpires, of course, used to be right even when wrong; in the Decision Review System age, they more resemble the front desk clerk whose manager you demand when you don’t get what you want.

The expression “umpire’s call”, in fact, is now a synonym for anything that looks wrong by the technology, naively regarded as infallible, but somehow deemed correct under playing conditions, routinely seen as bonkers.

It’s not like players are entirely enamoured of the DRS either; just ask Joe Root. But it’s when the system is absent, as in the BBL, as in the Sheffield Shield, that tempers seem really to fray.

Why? Because CA has treated umpiring with benign neglect, to the extent that its standards have fallen behind the rest of the game.

Despite the vast increase in the amount of televised cricket in Australia, umpiring remains only barely professional and vaguely national.

Virtually everything about umpire development and promotion is still done at state level, where umpires’ and scorers’ associations are run by hardworking honorary officials.

Umpires have no trade union, peak body or advocacy group; even the best are insecure seasonal contractors mainly on one-year deals typically working other jobs; they obtain only perfunctory support and education from CA’s high-performance program.

CA this summer also slashed the number and remuneration of match referees, and at the moment has neither integrity chief nor integrity manager, with Sean Carroll and Nicole Malcher yet to be replaced

The entirely foreseeable result? Morale is poor and discontent rising, although it is difficult to speak up given CA’s employment monopsony.

Not so long ago, Australia was providing four ICC Test umpires; now it furnishes two. There are meant to be twelve umpires on Australia’s elite panel; there are ten, two retirees having not been replaced. And when border closures placed further pressure on local umpiring depth in the BBL this summer, it showed.

Add to this the radical challenges of modern cricket’s officiation. Consider, for instance, the difficulty of adjudging an lbw in T20, where the batsman is moving constantly round the crease, the bowler is messing with angles, and self-defence from a powerful drive might be necessary — that might have confounded even Dickie Bird.

Television, meanwhile, is busily granting everyone else the superpowers of stopping, reversing and slowing down time, of eavesdropping on nicks and spying heat signatures, so that it becomes “obvious” when an “error” is made.

So what do players see when look at an umpire now? A proportion, at least, would see a nameless guy whom they suspect couldn’t cut it as a player — someone older in an ever younger game, formal in an ever more athletic game, poorly-paid in a wealthy game, obscure in a fame-obsessed game, and who on television, from which we take so many cues, is regularly the dupe. This season, thanks to COVID, he doesn’t even hold your hat.

The opposite, then, of everything the modern game is set up to exalt — one who serves, that others may enjoy and excel. For some, that makes the umpire an object of contempt. Like the kind displayed by Bayswater-Morley.

Fortunately, this matter did not stop there. Livestreaming of premier cricket means that behaviours are being watched more vigilantly by multiple eyes.

As footage from the incident was shared the day after, players from multiple clubs indulged in some social media biffo — effectively, nowadays, a new form of spillover dissent.

The WACA got involved. The tribunal suspended two Bayswater players and reprimanded three online brawlers. After meetings between the WACA and the Western Australian Umpires and Scorers’ Association, people are hoping it will be a wake-up call, traditional deterrents having failed.

But because officiation and conduct are related, improving them is a collective endeavour involving a sense of mutual responsibility. Dissent is reprehensible; it’s also tells us something about general attitudes, wider failings.

Ironically, given the invocation of AB as an example of someone to whom it “just meant that little bit more”, it was good to hear a story last week of his son Lachlan, who plays premier cricket in Brisbane.

Earlier this season, Lachlan was given out lbw when hit on the hip, the ball missing leg stump by some feet. Not only did he make no complaint, but he told teammates: “That’s my fault. I should have hit it for 4.” A credit to his father.