“We need to move past this assumption that the best on-field match officials are also your best television match officials.” – Simon Taufel
Telford Vice / Cape Town
“TV umpire to director, we have a review for …” It’s a step in the process that starts when players are dissatisfied with the on-field umpires’ decision. Or when those umpires are unsure. So the umpire upstairs, using video evidence and gizmos, takes a look and hands down the verdict.
The mechanism has become an integral part of the modern game. Many sports have embraced electronic officiating, but none has done so as well as cricket. Crucial to the system’s integrity is trust in the technology, credible, confident communication, and transparency.
The original electronics were vetted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and relaying the relevant information and umpires’ deliberations to the watching public is a matter of connecting the officials to screens and speakers. What matters more than anything, then, is the human element: what umpires say and how they say it.
“The two biggest skills required in TV match officiating are composure and effective communication,” Simon Taufel, the former elite umpire, told Cricbuzz before plucking an analogy from the skies: “Businesses that need to focus on communicating effectively, something like air traffic control, use agreed terminology and work with non-English speaking people.
“We have to work with the lowest common denominator. While that might seem too basic, if we don’t do that we don’t have effective communication. We run an international game, and English is not something that comes easily to a lot of people.”
Umpires’ familiar DRS script makes them sound as if they’re on autopilot, but consistency is part of the point. To be believable and believed, what they say must be repeatable. And understood by all involved and by all who have an interest in the outcome.
“It can come across as robotic, but when you have very clear, agreed communication phrases of introduction, identification, requests and acknowledgement, then you leave very little room for human error and misunderstanding,” Taufel said.
He knows what he’s talking about. Having built a sterling reputation as an international umpire from January 1999 to August 2012 — he was awarded the David Shepherd Trophy a record five times consecutively — Taufel served as the ICC’s umpire performance and training manager from November 2012 to August 2016.
His tenure at the ICC coincided with those of senior administrators David Richardson, Geoff Allardice and Vince van der Bijl. With the input of leading umpires of the era like Steve Davis and Ian Gould, they transformed what had arrived in November 1992 as basic electronic umpiring and was first deployed as DRS in July 2008. The joke inside the ICC in the early days was that DRS stood for “the David Richardson System” because of the then chief executive’s drive to improve and refine it.
The tinkering continues. In March 2022 it was decided the television umpire would keep an eye on no-balls. That meant part of the DRS script became “I have checked the front foot and it is a fair delivery”. The change saved time and allowed on-field umpires to keep their eye on the action unfolding in front. As logical as that update to the playing conditions is, it shuttled between various committees of the ICC and the MCC — the custodians of the “laws” — and back for years before it was adopted.
A previous major step was taken in November 2014, when communication between umpires and broadcasters was first relayed to television viewers. “We held off on doing that for a long time on the basis that, quite often, a good decision can be ruined by a poor explanation,” Taufel said. “You become protective of your match officials to ensure you don’t fall over in that space.”
There were two challenges, Taufel said: “Number one was for the match officials to clearly articulate what they wanted, why they were making the decision, and to sell the decision verbally. The second was getting the commentators to shut up and let the TV match official talk and explain what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. It was a leap of faith but it worked.”
Spectacularly well, as was proved again in a game between Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bangalore at Eden Gardens on Sunday. Virat Kohli felt the slow full toss he had slapped to Harshit Rana for a return catch had reached him above his waist, and was thus high enough to be ruled a no-ball. The on-field umpires, Akshay Totre and Vinod Seshan, deemed that a possibility, and — before Kohli demanded they do — asked television official Michael Gough to investigate. Replays showed Kohli was correct about the ball’s height. But they also proved he was well outside his crease when he met the delivery, which made his argument irrelevant.
As “law” 41.7.1 makes clear: “Any delivery, which passes or would have passed, without pitching, above waist height of the striker standing upright at the popping crease, is unfair. Whenever such a delivery is bowled, the umpire shall call and signal no-ball.”
Kohli’s front foot was the best part of a metre in front of the crease. His back foot was also out of his ground. The gizmos produced data that said the ball would have reached him a dozen centimetres below his waist had he been “standing upright at the popping crease”.
Gough rightly gave Kohli out, triggering enough fury from the batter to cost him half his match fee. Much of the subsequent heat has been aimed, unfairly, at the umpires. Instead, Kohli should have been upset with himself for falling prey to Rana’s canny sucker punch — and for his own lack of knowledge on what constitutes a waist-high no-ball. Kohli was wrong. The officials were correct, and they had the data to prove it.
“The biggest challenge with the television umpire role is that once a decision is referred or reviewed, we never get it wrong,” Taufel said. To that end, Taufel — who now manages umpires in franchise leagues — foresees a category of officials who make their decisions from behind a screen exclusively.
“In the ILT20 this year we had two specialist television officials, who did 17 matches each. We had not only live comms to air, but two video cameras in the box so that people could see what they were doing as well as hear what they were doing. They were also able to have the odd exchange with the commentator.
“Matching the best people with the best technology to get the best outcomes is a must. We need to move past this assumption that the best on-field match officials are also your best television match officials. I think that’s incorrect. I worked in printing before I became an umpire and my best printer didn’t make my best foreman.”
Clearly, technology isn’t done with umpiring. So far cricket has managed the relationship better than sports like football, which is frequently mired in Video Assistant Referee controversies. Nottingham Forest were denied what they considered three clear penalties in their 2-0 EPL loss to Everton at Goodison Park on Sunday. Forest alleged publicly that the VAR official, Stuart Attwell, supported Luton Town — who like Forest are struggling to avoid relegation. “If we were in another country we’d start speaking about conspiracy,” Nuno Espírito Santo, Forest’s manager, said. In cricket, Kohli’s futile rant — routine by football standards — is as bad as it gets.
“We’re lucky that we have a lot more line decisions than most other sports,” Taufel said. “Rugby is a very technical game, even soccer. But we still have a lot of … you use the term controversy. I use differences of opinion because people see things from their own perspective. When we talk about clean catches or obstruction, we’re talking about wilful intent or a definition.”
And talking in clear, consistent, credible, confident communication.
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