For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,
He writes – not that you won or lost – but how you played the Game.
Grantland Rice’s poem Alumnus Football eloquently – if perhaps a little cloyingly – uses an extended sporting metaphor to convey a more general philosophy towards life. But in sport, that very idea espoused by Rice – that it’s the taking part that counts – is looking increasingly sepia-tinged.
Without a doubt, sport is about human achievement; each participant should, of course, seek to give the one-hundred-and-ten per cent of which the old cliché speaks. But just as important to sport as endeavour is human error. Failure, if you will. Without losers, there would be no winners. Failure enables competition. And it’s competition which gives sport its drama; which gives it that narcotic quality that keeps you going back for more.
Yes: sport is as much about human error as it is about human achievement. And that principle extends to the match officials every bit as much as the participants. Imagine the destructive effect on post-match pub banter if every offside decision was perfectly adjudged; if every red card was fully deserved.
Yet, with such high stakes riding on the outcome of matches, error on the part of the officials, it seems, is an evil, to be eliminated at all costs. And nowhere is this attitude more prevalent than in the referral system employed in the recent Test Match between South Africa and England.
The referral system, briefly, allows each team to refer the on-field umpire’s decision to an off-field official with access to technology. The off-field official can then either overrule the on-field umpire in the event of a substantial error, or allow the original decision of his on-field colleague to stand.
While this is all very commendable at face value, one has to wonder what effect it will have on the game. First, umpires will be working in the knowledge that their decisions are open to review, and the existence of that safeguard erodes the imperative for them to make the right decision first time. Will this lead to sloppier umpiring? Only time will tell.
Furthermore, how often, over the course of a five-day Test match, does the outcome of that match hinge on a single umpiring decision? Test cricket is played over such a long time-frame, and with often very conclusive margins of victory, that it’s hard to believe that a single incorrect umpiring decision will frequently – in and of itself – cost a team the match. If the losing captain spent his post-match interview berating umpiring decisions, it’d be viewed as an attempt to excuse a poor performance; the referral system simply displaces the point at which the umpire’s authority is undermined.
None of this is to suggest that poor umpiring should be accepted. A bad umpire should expect to continue officiating no more than a bad player should expect to retain his place in the team. But there are margins of error. If an official is constantly making poor decisions, or those decisions frequently – and directly – have an adverse effect on the outcome of the game, then that official should be removed from post.
However, the most fundamental argument against the referral system in Test cricket is that it undermines the drama of the contest. That feeling of elation when a wicket falls quickly evaporates as soon as a player signals for a review. Sport is ultimately a futile pastime, and it’s the veneer of drama which maintains our interest in the competition. Strip away that coating, and what do you have left?
Alumnus Football, on one level, demonstrates that sport mirrors life. Let’s not use the sledgehammer of technology to crack that mirror.
Three cheers for human error!
Tags: Cricket, sport, technology, Test Match, umpiring