Standard Of Umpiring Came Under Hammer In BCCI Conclave

Home venues with neutral curators. That was the main suggestion put forward by the majority of state cricket associations to the Indian cricket board at the captains and coaches conclave in Mumbai held recently.

The issues discussed at the conclave ranged from requests for state contracts for Ranji players to increase in daily allowance. Attempts were also made to make the umpiring accountable by the reintroduction of captains’ report after each Ranji game.

The chief topic of discussion was neutral venues. Last season, many Ranji teams faced problems owing to apathy that existed at the neutral venues. Unsurprisingly, a majority of associations wanted a rollback of the idea. The top associations such as Mumbai, Karnataka, Saurashtra and Uttar Pradesh were not in favour of neutral venues, as it takes a toll on the players, especially with only a gap of four days between two games.

Many have suggested that the BCCI appoint their curators at each venue who would prepare sporting wickets. There were also suggestions to give an extra point to the team which wins outright while playing away from home. The conclave also discussed that board should give a uniform daily allowance for the Ranji teams.

Even as issues were hotly debated, Sourav Ganguly, the head of the technical committee of BCCI, was conspicuous by his absence.

While the likes of Suresh Raina, Irfan Pathan, Parthiv Patel, Mohammad Kaif, Aditya Tare and Pankaj Singh put forward their views on the functioning of domestic cricket, Ganguly was missing in action. 

Among the board officials present were acting president CK Khanna, Chaudhary and game development managers Ratnakar Shetty and MV Sridhar. The Committee of Administrators (COA) was represented by Ramchandra Guha.

“It would’ve helped if Sourav was there, as he would’ve listened to the issues the players face first-hand. As a technical committee head, it’s important for him to get a direct feedback from the players. He could’ve joined the meeting via skype,” a top BCCI official told TOI

Meanwhile, many captains complained about the standard of umpiring in domestic games which has been a cause of concern. A few captains also requested the BCCI to re-start captains’ report, which the Indian board had done away two years ago.

While leading Gujarat in the Irani Cup, Parthiv Patel had lamented that the same set of umpires were making mistakes.

“We had discontinued the practice of the captains giving their report on umpires because the losing captain would mostly give a bad rating to the officials. But we may have to revive it now,” said an official.

“The umpiring have been horrible. The worst point is that domestic games are not telecast apart from knock-out stages. Look how the umpiring has gone down. When we argue about it, we are handed over punishments or fines. What about the umpires? Nothing has been happening to them. At least have a captain’s report after the game, so that we could register our concerns,” a captain said.