Mutley
Years ago
Umpiring in other sports (feat. the Cricket!)
Has anyone been watching the Australia v South Africa Test match? If so you will have been treated to one of the worst displays of umpiring in professional sport that you will ever have the misfortune to witness. Anyone who could watch Aleem Dar's LBW verdict against Andrew Symonds and not be calling for cricket umpires to be replaced with a couple of coat racks and video replay has got to be out of their mind.
Cricket is one of those rare games where by the official can be COMPLETELY replaced by video replays WITHOUT disruption to the flow of the game. International cricket umpiring, particularly the great Billy Bowden, has gotten so bad that for the sake of the game, the players, and those watching it, MUST be replaced by replay technology.
This brings me to why I have posted this on a basketball site. Basketball is an EXTREMELY difficult game to umpire and while I have seen a number of average or below average decisions at NBL games this year, it is nothing close to what International cricketers have to deal with. There has been a bit of criticism of the younger Adelaide NBL referees, Phil Haines and Andrew Filmer, but to be honest these two guys have had excellent junior and ABL careers and, in my opinion, do a pretty good job in the NBL.
Referees, like players, take time to really develop at the NBL level, and I think that this fact is sometimes overlooked. Oscar Forman took 3 years to develop into a solid NBL player, Jacob Holmes 2, and Brad Hill in his second year is still doing it. Why should we expect anything different from referees?
(Mod: You're not getting many reads. Let's add the word "Cricket" to the title and see if that gets anyone in.)
