Technology and advice boost for elite umpires and referees

Malcolm Speed Photo CricInfo

Umpires and match referees chosen to be part of the International Cricket Council's elite panels in April will be given a briefing on their new roles at a four day meeting in Cape Town soon after the announcement of their appointment.

ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed reported after today's meeting of cricket's national CEOs in Christchurch, New Zealand that a number of issues will be dealt with at the meeting, including legal training from a specialised lawyer.

Umpires will be given laptop computers so that they can be forwarded immediate information on how issues have been dealt with at other international contests, Tests or one-dayers, so that there is more uniformity in decision-making.

Each umpire will also be given a CD-Rom with recordings of the decisions they have made during a day's play so they will be able to look at their decisions and learn from them.

Five Super match referees will be appointed and a group of between 70-80 former international players have been targeted as potential referees and some of them were being interviewed by chief match referee Ranjan Madugalle as prospective appointments.

Former England captain and notable psychologist Mike Brearley will also attend the Cape Town camp to talk to the umpires about the psychology of decision-making and how to cope when they make bad decisions.

"We are doubling their workload. We want to wheel out a significantly better product in umpiring and referees than we have had in the past," he said.

The meeting of the chief executives also discussed a new system of identifiable offences that players or officials might commit and the degree of punishment applicable.

Category one offences were where players could lose 50% of their match fee. Category two offences were more serious involving fines greater than 50% and one match bans.

Category three moved out of fines and into bans of between two and four matches while Category four was for very serious offences with bans of five matches or more and up to life bans.

Speed said the formula gave a better direction with which umpires and referees could charge players while also giving players a better idea of what was and wasn't acceptable.

"It is player behaviour which drives a lot of this," he said.

Once it had been approved by the CEOs, the matter would go to the ICC executive board which is meeting in Cape Town next month and then it would go to the Cricket Committee - Playing for their thoughts and finally it would be the umpires and referees who put the final stamp on it.