Shortage of umpires is alarming
by Paul Barker / Alan Rowley, 30th July 2003

Paul Barker finds the shortage of umpires in the Bassetlaw League 'alarming'. Paul says: 'I am so worried about what is happening I feel something needs to be said and done before it gets too late.' Read his own personal viewpoint here ...

"The current shortage of umpires in our local leagues is an alarming trend and despite major initiatives to recruit more people into the role, little difference seems to have been made to draw people into the role of administering the laws of the game at matches.

In fact it has recently come to my attention that some umpires have decided that enough is enough due to the fact they have been verbally abused by players during matches. Let's face facts there is nothing to be gained by using abusive language at any time and whilst 99 players out of 100 generally speaking are good honest sportsmen, there is always one who will take matters too far and upset the match officials.

This is mainly due to the fact that these players are totally ignorant and the game would be a lot better off without their services. You also hear of criticism from officials from the boundary about certain decisions and these people are not worth even talking to because how they can know what is going off more than 100 yards away against a man (or woman) who is only 22, beggars belief.

Everyone reacts differently and whilst some umpires are able to laugh off any criticism directed at them, others are deeply offended by what is a totally unnecessary and unwarranted attack on their character. Another fact is that some clubs moan about the fact that they have had no umpires at their matches and quite possibly this may have come about because a member of that club has directed criticism which has resulted in a person deciding not to stand anymore. In that case have they any right to moan? Quite frankly I don't think so!

The advent of the Premier Leagues has also done its best to decimate the umpiring lists in the local leagues. Several umpires from our top leagues were taken by these so called super leagues and they have been very difficult to replace. It's the same in every walk of life, if you lose 20 customers its not the easiest job in the world to replace them. I hope that people who abuse the officials think about this when they are doing it.

The Bassetlaw Cricket League are on average 25 umpires short of staffing every game in the league each week and I am given to believe that the Derbyshire County League are in an even more parlous state. Despite training courses being run by many dedicated officials the problem is getting worse rather than better. So what is to be done about this? Although it is rather dire I believe a punishment on players which will really hurt is the only option.

I can understand our leagues wanting to keep things running smoothly but without umpires to staff matches problems will become much worse. Instead of a six to eight week ban for the worst offenders I feel that the answer might be to hand out bans of a full season or maybe two seasons if the offence is bad enough. Surely that would make the person who is forthcoming with a tirade of abuse think twice as to what he is saying before he launches himself into a foul mouthed assault on the umpires.

Another answer might be to take points of the offending clubs. Not just five or six but something between 50 to 100 depending on the seriousness of the event. Sounds drastic possibly, but if it means an umpire stays in the game rather than hangs his white coat up and retires the end will have justified the means.

Just imagine a team battling hard for the championship, suddenly losing a vital cog in their armoury for a whole season and being docked 75 points! I am sure they would think again about ever taking on such a risky player in their team and also make sure that none of the others would ever damage their chances again.

As I quoted earlier we must at all costs prevent umpires from packing the job up. We must support them emphatically and whilst I don't particularly like the measures that I have quoted, if it has the desired effect then so be it. I don't want to hear of one more single umpire packing the job up; we haven't got enough to start with so we must be positive and prevent it from happening again.

By the same token I would ask the umpires not to march headlong into reporting incidents. The only ones we want to hear of are the serious ones and lets hope there are very few or better still none of these. Every umpire who packs up is one too many and causes more problems for the Appointments Secretary and believe you me their job is hard enough anyway without making it any worse.

Let us all hope that things will get better rather than worse. We all want this great game of ours to continue and prosper. Cricket is the finest game that has ever been invented and long may it continue. With everyone's help it can do, but we must weed out the parasites and erase them from this wonderful sport before they do any more damage."

Derbyshire County League fixture secretary Chris Higginbottom told Outlawed: "Paul is quite right that the situation in the DCCL is worse than the Bassetlaw, but we are working on it! There are things that I personally would disagree with but it is a personal view, and one that most people would probably support."