In these days of DRS reviews - Do we really need neutral umpires?

[MenInG]

I understand that people have reservations about the quality of some local umpires but if you have good ones, then where is the need for a neutral umpire?

Imran Khan suggested neutral umpires to ensure blatantly one-sided umpiring decisions were avoided but that ship has sailed now with DRS/scrutiny on TV etc

If there is a need to develop better quality local umpires then that should be addressed as a training issue.

Flying in neutral umpires cost money and also creates unnecessary logistical challenges in these COVID times.

 

[MenInG]

Guess the other concern is that without neutral umpires the sort of targeting that Darryl Hair did against Murali would not happen but then there is enough scrutiny in today's cricket to stop that from happening?

 

[James]

I would be happy with keeping the home umpires and the additional review each, it seems to be working fine.

 

[wrongun]

I prefer international umpires.

The umpires call on LBW & close ground catches is still hugeky influential.

 

[Thanos]

Home or neutral umpires, both are human and make mistakes. But home umpires get targeted easily and fans label them biased.
Like in last Ind-NZ series umpires were poor in making decisions but don't think they were biased.

So I would still vote for neutral umpires.

 

[Barragan]

Yeah, you still need them!

Too many decisions that could be umpires call being given to the home side and not even DRS can do anything about it.

 

[Fahdi]

Firstly a biased umpire can still do a lot of damage to a team even with the extra reviews available due to things like umpires call as well decisions made after reviews run out.

More importantly though the integrity of the game can be called into question. Let's assume that every umpire is absolutely impartial and unbiased, they are still going to make mistakes and there will be times that the majority of those mistakes help one team over the other. Despite the best intentions of the umpires you cannot convince all the fans that there were no biases involved and questions will be raised even if every single decision gets overturned. Sooner of later a disgruntled player is going to say something about the umpiring and that will raise a whole new storm.

The risk that comes with not having neutral umpires is just too great and can really damage the game that we all love so much.

 

[SL_Fan]

What we really need is to get rid of this umpire's call nonsense. Makes no sense whatsoever.