I don't think decision-making performances have changed a great deal over the years. With the improvements in the technology utilised by the respective telecasters, I am of the opinion that the only difference is the scrutiny that the decisions attract.
A prime example is Dickie Bird. He is undoubtedly the finest umpire ever to raise a finger, but I would be interested to see how his self-admitted reticence to give an LBW (particularly if the ball was moving in towards the batsman in the air or off the pitch) would have stood up in the age of hawkeye and ultra fast cameras.
Obviously, this is a hypothesis that isn't able to be proven or disproven very readily, but I would wager that the ratio of correct decisions versus incorrect ones would be pretty static over the years. Occasionally some poor decisions are made, and even more rarely an umpire will make a string of poor decisions and have a bad game. I think the notion that poor decisions are influencing anything but an infinitesimally small number of games is hugely overblown.
The area in which umpiring standards has certainly declined is the control of the game in between deliveries. Harking back to the era of Dickie again, the way that he and his ilk controlled the players' behaviour and suppressed any flare-ups is definitely lacking in today's umpires. That said, I don't think that all of the blame can be placed at the feet of the contemporary umpiring fraternity.
Twenty years ago, the sanctity of umpires' decision was almost absolute. Since that time, there has been a steady flow of powers that have been passed from the umpires to various committees and panels and ICC officials and whatnot. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with moving decisions to people and bodies that may be better able to more accurately consider them, but the way that the changes have taken place has almost exclusively followed an on-field incident that involved the umpires' authority being questioned. The reaction by the ICC has, almost without exception, been to find a politically expedient solution that involved further emasculating the authority of the umpires. You can't expect an umpire to be able to exert as much influence on the flow of the game when the consequences for ignoring the umpire have become so benign and variable.
Another couple of factors that have contributed to this have been the expansion of the game, and the policy of umpires' neutrality. With the way that umpires are perpetually jetting around the world, the opportunity to develop familiarity, friendship and respect between the players and the individual umpires isn't there today, at least to the extent of times past. Whereas a Dickie Bird could rely on the mutual trust and respect developed over the years to help diffuse a potentially explosive situation, that familiarity just doesn't exist anymore, and probably never will again.
(Not to mention, of course, the almost open hostility that has opened up between various political and racial alliances in world cricket. Sadly, instances of that animosity has spread to pretty much all levels, and needless to say the umpire-player relationships are far from immune.)
Add to all of this the explosion in revenues that the game generates, and the litigious manner that big money invariably produces, and umpires just aren't in the position to try and negotiate their way through an on-field situation, and must factor in what a higher authority will adjudicate later. Coupled with the way that some more recent events have transpired, the inevitable result will be umpires and officials looking for the path of least resistance, which is not always the best solution for the game itself.
Unfortunately, I neither see an obvious solution to this, nor do I see the will to revert back to the manner of umpires past. It is a great shame, because the way that umpires like Dickie, Shepherd and the like ran a game only enhanced the credibility of the spectacle.
Or should I have said Watched?
Well if they do they would more than likely beat us atm
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