29-6

[Scallywag]

Can you blame them ?
Given what the white have done in the past 300 years(look at yer country. You robbed and butchered the original inhabitants), .

That sounds like a reasonable explanation for why umpires would be biased.

If thats why you are complaining about the umpiring then maybe cricket is not you game, maybe you should join osama's group.

But back to the constant complaing about the umpires it must be said that there is never a series involving Aus and IND, Pak or SL that dosent end up in complaints. Then you justify it by saying 300 years ago blahh blahhh.

 

[C_C]

That sounds like a reasonable explanation for why umpires would be biased.

If thats why you are complaining about the umpiring then maybe cricket is not you game, maybe you should join osama's group.

But back to the constant complaing about the umpires it must be said that there is never a series involving Aus and IND, Pak or SL that dosent end up in complaints. Then you justify it by saying 300 years ago blahh blahhh.

And as per complaints, there have been complaints about the recent RSA-ENG series.


No that sounds like a reasonable explanation why many people will PERCEIVE A BIAS.
As per umpires, dont forget they are mostly over 50 and grew up in an era when race relations in the west were still highly seggragationist(particularly in your country) and color was a big part of their life.

As per cricket not being 'my' game since it was invented by the english and not by the colored folks, maybe you should give up all yer guns and ammo since gunpowder is not an european invention.
Maybe you should give up your ships, as navigation was discovered in India, maybe you should give up your frickin forks and knives as they were discoverd in china and go join the KKK.
Actually i wouldnt be surprised if you already were a member.


PS: the crap didnt stop 300 years ago. The crap stopped only in the last 20-40 years and even then it hasnt stopped completely. The crap has been going on for far longer than that.

And like i said, i guess Woolmer and Richardson are playing the race-card as well, eh ?

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Can you blame them ?
Given what the white have done in the past 300 years(look at yer country. You robbed and butchered the original inhabitants), i would say it would be a while till the colored world trusts the white again.

Frankly, I cannot imagine why you think this is relevant. The fact of the matter is, the is absolutely no way any sane, unbiased person who watched the games in question could think that the umpires intentionally favoured the Australian team, and if they are simply mistakes there is nothing for anybody to complain about. Whether or not white people are inherently evil is really beside the point entirely, and the fact that you would bring such a thing up when it has nothing whatsoever to do with cricket is really indicative of why people respond dubiously to complaints of unfair treatment from such parochial fans of subcontinental teams.

 

[meatspx]

I'm not sure what C_C is trying to say - perhaps the moderators should step in. Scallywag didn't mean that cricket wasn't your game because it wasn't invented by the 'East'.

C_C is obviously frustrated because he thinks that 'Westerners' believe themselves to be superior to everyone else, hence why he's trying to even up the stakes by using examples of what good the East has done and the crimes committed in the past by the West.

Wolmer and Richardson are not playing the race card - have you actually read what they are saying? The pressure of the home ground advantage, and the FACT that the Australians blow away every opposition they face - results in umpires giving the benefit of the doubt more to the Aussies, at the expense of both sub-continent and other teams (including NZ, which incidently is predominatly White).

Bowden is a young umpire - he's quite zany, probably has been mocked alot before in his career and life in general - I don't think he would be a candidate for a racist. Yet he is one of the umpires under fire.

 

[C_C]

Frankly, I cannot imagine why you think this is relevant. The fact of the matter is, the is absolutely no way any sane, unbiased person who watched the games in question could think that the umpires intentionally favoured the Australian team, and if they are simply mistakes there is nothing for anybody to complain about. Whether or not white people are inherently evil is really beside the point entirely, and the fact that you would bring such a thing up when it has nothing whatsoever to do with cricket is really indicative of why people respond dubiously to complaints of unfair treatment from such parochial fans of subcontinental teams.

If you read carefully, i DID NOT say that the umpires are racist.
I merely responded to scallywag's whine that the whites are always taking shots on the race issue and i said why that is so.
As per favouring intentionally, since you dont know his mind anymore than i do, i dont think you can make ANY claim of that sort.
No sane unbiassed person can question if the umpires INTENTIONALLY favoured the austraian team or not
No sane unbiassed person can question if the umpires DIDNT INTENTIONALLY favour the aussies or not.

And intentional or subconcious, i dont give a hoot.
Its almost 4x the decisions favouring OZ from woolmer's analysis.
I dont wish to debate if his analysis is right or wrong, because we cannot establish that.
But what i am pointing out is, as long as you have humans umpiring the games, you CANNOT divorce the question of bias.
A machine is completely unbiassed and they are more accurate.
Even IF they wernt accurate,i would institute machines as the point is not getting the lbw law right (laws change with time) but the dispensation of the law will be completely without bias.

 

[shaka]

He is one of the best and fairest umpires imho.

 

[C_C]

I'm not sure what C_C is trying to say

Thats the only thing you got right with your comments regarding me.
I am NOT saying they are racist or that race is the reason PAK got the worse end of the deal.

C_C is obviously frustrated because he thinks that 'Westerners' believe themselves to be superior to everyone else, hence why he's trying to even up the stakes by using examples of what good the East has done and the crimes committed in the past by the West.

Do not try to psychoanalyse me. That is inherently stupid from your part
I have no reason to be frustrated actually- i have quiete a successful life and career.

If you actually bother reading a few times what i said, you might get the point i am trying to make.
Understanding something and agreeing with something are two totally different things.

 

[telsor]

I am sure a system can be implemented where the process is significantly speeded up....

Then when they do so and get back to us with the results, I'll change my mind.

You can appeal to the umpire for lbws, he activates the responder for the equipment(i think all lbw referrals should be done to the hawkeye) and a red/green verdict from the machine is given.

Like run out decisions? So, a 30 second wait every lbw decision is acceptable to you? Say 20/day, thats 2.5 overs lost. Of course, nobody would ever manipulate this to slow down the batting team as they close in on a target on day 5 or anything...

Considering all it is is algorithms and analysis, you can get it done in no time.
You can do significant simulations from the processing power of the average PC at home and this isnt too comlex a simulations( 7-8 parameters or so)

The computation of trajectory isn't the tricky part ( although it is reasonably tricky ), Gathering the data is! We're talking about properly calibrating sensors to within a millimeter or two at a distance of 100 meters. These sensors have to maintain their accuracy in all weather conditions over an ( at least ) 7 hour period which would probably include significant temperature and humidity changes.

I say sensors, because it wouldn't just be cameras..You need the computer tracking to assess every frame ( ~600 per second IIRC ) and find the ball and place it in relation to pitch/stumps/batsman with the afformentioned degree of accuracy. Getting that accuracy means a VERY high number of pixels per frame, meaning there is a very large amount of data being processed. Only then can you do the computing of where the ball would have gone. Little details like faint edges with the bat and pad close together would also be 'tricky'.

To get that kind of work done quickly, you're not talking about a PC.

And the cyclops thing..it can be instantaneous for no-balls...Just like they have it for serves in tennis.

Probably the easiest task, and should be the first implimented. That said, as I mentioned in another post, I watched a bit of the Australian open tennis, and hawkeye ( which is supposedly better than cyclops ) made several calls that didn't seem to agree with slow motion replays, and those cameras are relatively close to the action.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

But what i am pointing out is, as long as you have humans umpiring the games, you CANNOT divorce the question of bias.

You know, I've been watching cricket for quite a number of years and I've seen plenty of bad decisions go against the team that I'm supporting during the course of the match. For example, Nathan Hauritz was given out incorrectly during the dying moments of the 4th test in India recently, when he and Gillespie were batting reasonably well chasing a small total. It is not a huge leap to imagine that perhaps this poor decision cost Australia the game. Or maybe he would have got out next ball anyway - who knows.

Regardless, NOT ONCE have I ever considered the possibility that the umpires were cheating to unfairly disadvantage any particular team. So yes, it is possible to divorce the question of bias if you have faith in the system by which umpires are selected and monitored and believe that every international standard umpire in the modern era is a professional who is above being biased. It is of course possible that bias could exist, but it is also possible that hawkeye could incorrectly judge the trajectory of a delivery and falsely give a batsman out. The human element in umpiring is a central part of cricket, and I would be loathe to give it up.

A machine is completely unbiassed and they are more accurate.

As I have been arguing in another thread, I utterly disagree. Not only do I disagree that the technology (for certain types of subjective judgements at least) as it currently exists is sufficiently able to be definate in a decision to be used in international cricket, but I think it is the simple fact that hawkeye is a machine which reduces its ability to adequately umpire the game. A human umpire brings knowledge of cricket and experience into umpiring, a machine that attempts to predict the future trajectory of, say, a half-volley leg break that pitches just inches before hitting the pad does not have said knowledge about cricket and if the data offered (time between pitching and hitting the pad) is not sufficient it cannot be relied on to make the correct call.

 

[C_C]

Like run out decisions? So, a 30 second wait every lbw decision is acceptable to you? Say 20/day, thats 2.5 overs lost. Of course, nobody would ever manipulate this to slow down the batting team as they close in on a target on day 5 or anything...

The reason why runouts take so long is because of the human factor.
Its a dude sitting in the stadium that sees the image 10-12 times from different angles before comming to a verdict.
A computer algorithm could do it in a few seconds i believe.

I am not talkin about the umpire referring every decision upstairs.
I am talkin about no human involvement....ie, the machine collects data as the match progresses. When somoene appeals to the ump, the umpire activates the checking algorithm which produces a verdict in a few seconds.
I dont think the response times to be more than 5 sec more than what it is now and if there are 24 appeals a game(unlikely), thats just two minutes added on for extra time.

The computation of trajectory isn't the tricky part ( although it is reasonably tricky ), Gathering the data is! We're talking about properly calibrating sensors to within a millimeter or two at a distance of 100 meters. These sensors have to maintain their accuracy in all weather conditions over an ( at least ) 7 hour period which would probably include significant temperature and humidity changes.

I say sensors, because it wouldn't just be cameras..You need the computer tracking to assess every frame ( ~600 per second IIRC ) and find the ball and place it in relation to pitch/stumps/batsman with the afformentioned degree of accuracy. Getting that accuracy means a VERY high number of pixels per frame, meaning there is a very large amount of data being processed. Only then can you do the computing of where the ball would have gone. Little details like faint edges with the bat and pad close together would also be 'tricky'.

To get that kind of work done quickly, you're not talking about a PC.

Aye you are.
THose sensors are elementary stuff in the market. Last year i designed a maze-navigating robot car that had active light sensors capable of detecting a 1% drop in luminosity over a distance of 250 metres.
Cost ? $25.99 canadian per detector.

And yes, your PC can do the job ( i am assuming you got a P3 2.0 Ghz processor with 512Mb RAM and 7200 rps HDD) quiete adequately.
The above kind of system is more than capable of handling the intermediate tactical air combat training simulations and that involves FAR more computing than a lbw referral.

hat said, as I mentioned in another post, I watched a bit of the Australian open tennis, and hawkeye ( which is supposedly better than cyclops ) made several calls that didn't seem to agree with slow motion replays, and those cameras are relatively close to the action.

FAR less # of errors than line umpires in general.
But like i said, even if some accuracy is compromised, it sure puts a rest to the question of bias and that is more important.

 

[C_C]

You know, I've been watching cricket for quite a number of years and I've seen plenty of bad decisions go against the team that I'm supporting during the course of the match.

Question is, did you count for and against ? Its pretty tough to be biassed when your team is the primary benificiary, isnt it ? ( and to the paranoid ones- this is NOT a dig at australia, i am talking in general- the most number of fans who are disbelievers in bias are usually fans of the dominant team).

Regardless, NOT ONCE have I ever considered the possibility that the umpires were cheating to unfairly disadvantage any particular team.

That is an illogical conclusion fromyour part. maybe you should've.

So yes, it is possible to divorce the question of bias if you have faith in the system by which umpires are selected and monitored and believe that every international standard umpire in the modern era is a professional who is above being biased.

What is the basis of your faith ?
I dont see any reason to have carte blanche faith in any system.

It is of course possible that bias could exist, but it is also possible that hawkeye could incorrectly judge the trajectory of a delivery and falsely give a batsman out.

That is NOT a bias.
That is error.
A human being can be accused of favouring a certain nationality/race/person due to personal bias.
An incorrectly judged trajectory by a computer wouldnt be bias as it would give the same result for ANYBODY- you,me or some alltime legend.

The human element in umpiring is a central part of cricket, and I would be loathe to give it up.

The human element of umpiring is also the chief reason why many disputes exist in cricket.
I see no reason to be attached to a faulty system.

Not only do I disagree that the technology (for certain types of subjective judgements at least) as it currently exists is sufficiently able to be definate in a decision to be used in international cricket, but I think it is the simple fact that hawkeye is a machine which reduces its ability to adequately umpire the game.

There is sufficient technology out there to IMPROVE on the 90-91% accuracy range of the umpires.
And the fact that hawkeye is NOT a human makes it a perfect judge- it cannot be accused of Bias towards any nation/race or particular player.

A human umpire brings knowledge of cricket and experience into umpiring,

Which is irrelevant.
As a judge, precedents are irrelevant.What is relevant is what the rules state and your ability to accurately guage the rules.

a machine that attempts to predict the future trajectory of, say, a half-volley leg break that pitches just inches before hitting the pad does not have said knowledge about cricket and if the data offered (time between pitching and hitting the pad) is not sufficient it cannot be relied on to make the correct call.

the machine is doing EXACTLY the same thing a human is doing- it is projecting the trajectory of the ball onto the wicket- that is EXACTLY what the umpires do in their head before they say out or not out.
Only difference is that the machine's data simulation is a LOT more accurate than the umpires, as they use precise numbers instead of an intuitive idea of the process.
So while the umpire projects from how the ball 'looks', a machine projects based on the precise velocity, angular momentum and distance to the stumps and can give you an exact answer to where it hits (with the +/- error range accurately).

And a machine doesnt need to have an appreciation for cricket or knowledge of cricket to make an accurate linecall.
All it has to do is implement this logic step:

IF foot is over line at time of delivery, Beep. Else keep shut.

That is all it needs to impliment to be an accurate guage of no balls for example.

 

[telsor]

The reason why runouts take so long is because of the human factor.
Its a dude sitting in the stadium that sees the image 10-12 times from different angles before comming to a verdict.
A computer algorithm could do it in a few seconds i believe.

I am not talkin about the umpire referring every decision upstairs.

That's what they said about runouts, now the umpires refer everything because even the slightest possibility of getting it wrong isn't worth it.

I am talkin about no human involvement....ie, the machine collects data as the match progresses. When somoene appeals to the ump, the umpire activates the checking algorithm which produces a verdict in a few seconds.
I dont think the response times to be more than 5 sec more than what it is now and if there are 24 appeals a game(unlikely), thats just two minutes added on for extra time.

What games do you watch that only have 24 LBW appeals in a game?

[talking about computing requirements, ie, a PC]

Aye you are.
THose sensors are elementary stuff in the market. Last year i designed a maze-navigating robot car that had active light sensors capable of detecting a 1% drop in luminosity over a distance of 250 metres.
Cost ? $25.99 canadian per detector.

Could they detect a ball moving at 150km/h within a millimeter?

And yes, your PC can do the job ( i am assuming you got a P3 2.0 Ghz processor with 512Mb RAM and 7200 rps HDD) quiete adequately.
The above kind of system is more than capable of handling the intermediate tactical air combat training simulations and that involves FAR more computing than a lbw referral.

As I said, the problem is gathering and assessing the data.

600 frames per second, each frame having 480*720 pixels ( would probably need better, but this is whats transmitted in a tv signal, so the numbers on that can be found easily. ) Let's say each pixel is 1 byte.

Thats 600*480*720 bytes or ~200MB of data transfer per second.

I think most PCs would fail at that.

Each frame then has to be opened and assessed to find the exact location of the ball.

THEN you can start checking the trajectory. ( I'll agree a PC could do this ).

FAR less # of errors than line umpires in general.
But like i said, even if some accuracy is compromised, it sure puts a rest to the question of bias and that is more important.

So the point isn't to improve accuracy, it's to remove the perception of bias? I'd rather people grew up and accepted the umpires decision.

One tiny detail....According to the laws of the game, the umpires decision is required for someone to be out..ie, if the umpire says it's not out, then according to the laws of the game, it is not out whatever else might have happened. In other words, by law, the umpires decision is always correct. ( yes, there is an obvious problem with this logic and I'm not advocating it, but I've always thought it was cute ).

 

[Neil Pickup]

I'm not sure what C_C is trying to say - perhaps the moderators should step in. Scallywag didn't mean that cricket wasn't your game because it wasn't invented by the 'East'.

C_C is obviously frustrated because he thinks that 'Westerners' believe themselves to be superior to everyone else, hence why he's trying to even up the stakes by using examples of what good the East has done and the crimes committed in the past by the West.

Wolmer and Richardson are not playing the race card - have you actually read what they are saying? The pressure of the home ground advantage, and the FACT that the Australians blow away every opposition they face - results in umpires giving the benefit of the doubt more to the Aussies, at the expense of both sub-continent and other teams (including NZ, which incidently is predominatly White).

Bowden is a young umpire - he's quite zany, probably has been mocked alot before in his career and life in general - I don't think he would be a candidate for a racist. Yet he is one of the umpires under fire.

Indeed.

There's no need for anyone to bring race, ethnicity, genocide, ships, knives, the Klu Klux Klan or anything with the thinly-veiled intent of igniting a flame war anywhere near the thread.

The point at hand is the umpiring decision making. Has anyone stopped to actually go through these thirty-five decisions and analyse how many were right, rather than blindly throwing a statistic around. Firstly, the better team will always get more decisions in their direction, which explains part of the discrepancy. That's not luck or bias.

 

[Richard]

but my problem with them is that they're SLOW. With it just being a TV thing, it doesn't slow the game up because they fix it all up while bowlers are walking back to their marks and the like ( ever notice that they tend to show these things a ball or two later, especially with spinners? ).

Err... the players get back to their marks, that already takes a stupidly long time.
You get the decision during that time = no time taken out of game.

 

[Richard]

Firstly, the better team will always get more decisions in their direction, which explains part of the discrepancy. That's not luck or bias.

And equally, the more bad decisions, the more it will favour the better side.
We saw plenty of that in the Aus-NZ series - I couldn't really see that an enormous amount more decisions went in Australia's favour, but because they are better players they took further advantage of it than the NZers did.
If it's 5 bad decisions against Australia, 4 against New Zealand it'll still favour Australia enormously.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

So the point isn't to improve accuracy, it's to remove the perception of bias? I'd rather people grew up and accepted the umpires decision.

Hear hear!

 

[Richard]

But we all know perfectly well that that's not going to happen, so the best idea is to have neutral Umpires to get rid of any chance of the suspicion that the home Umpire is biased.

 

[BoyBrumby]

I have no wish to fan the flames, but I wonder if anyone thought to ask Woolmer if he feels he's been on the short-end of more decisions as Pakistan's coach than he was as South Africa's.

I suspect his answer may be in the affirmative.

 

[telsor]

Err... the players get back to their marks, that already takes a stupidly long time.
You get the decision during that time = no time taken out of game.

Like the players stay in their positions while waiting for a run out decision?

If this happened, it would make things easier, but I just don't see it.

 

[pakster]

At the end of the day, no one can doubt that decisions invariably tend to go in favour of Australia, the close calls especially.
What we have to ask ourselves is, why?

The reasons explored thus far...

1. Over Appealing/preasurising umpires.
2. Racist Umpires
3. Crowd Pressure

Since there is no way of proving whether or not an umpire is racist, I guess we have to discount number 2. With regards to crowd pressure, this really only favours Aus when they are playing in aus and seeing as though aus get favourable decisions pretty much everywhere they play, crowd pressure isnt much of a factor.

So were left with over appealing. Anybody watching the pak-aus series would have noticed that the likes of warne, gillespie and gilchrist partake in obscene ammounts of appealing. The law of averages suggests that if Aus appeal for just about every half (or even quarter) chance they will eventually get their man. Add to that the factor of Adam Gilchrists image of being some sort of saintly figure sent down by god to rid the world of cheats and were pretty much left with a decision influenced by aussie intimidation.