Bribing umpires

Now this thread is serious.

 

When I watch international tournaments, I am constantly amazed of the extremely high quality of umpiring. BWF/BAC/BEC umpires seem to be able to make to make it through whole tournaments without a single incorrect decision, questionable handling of a situation, or even a fumbled announcement.

If I understand your post correctly, you are insinuating that there are umpires at top-level tournaments who make more than one incorrect decision per match. Can you point out a single instance where this has happened?

I'm assuming that you are not including very close line calls that the umpire could have overruled in theory but did not, leaving it to the line judges and instant review system. But even then, I cannot remember ever encountering an umpire (at any level, that is) whose decisions betrayed partisanship.

 

Badminton umpires performance records when subjected under Hawkeye is better than cricket or tennis umpires.

 

Agreed. Not much chance for umpire to make dubious calls that would sway the game one way or the other. Other than some receiver fault but rarely.

Now service judge and line judges, they get more chances for that...

 

One thing I have noticed is that umpires are more reluctant to overrule line judges now that Hawkeye is around. Natural, certainly, but it might make players waste challenges.

 

The entire decision review systems across sports is by default anti players and thus anti fans. We should have done away with manual umpiring 2 decades ago.

 

Can you elaborate why you think so? And how can a decision be "anti" players, when it usually benefits one player or the other?

Also note that there are no automatic umpiring systems. Even Hawk-Eye decisions are made by a hidden umpire, not automatically. I believe that it would be possible to automate Hawk-Eye and maybe service fault /net fault / shuttle touching calls given enough computing power, software and money, but that's only a part of umpiring.

 

In cricket, decisions can only be overturned if more than half the ball hits the stump, which is nothing but providing a free license to umpires to keep on commuting mistakes. So basically, if he says it was out, it stays out. If he says not out, it stays not out; irrespective of the fact that the ball is the same and the pro fan decision should always have been out in that case according to the rulebook.
Players lose referrals for wrong referrals, so why arent extra referrals credited for making correct referrals??? Either stop debiting referrals or start crediting them as well. And start financially penalising umpires exponentially for errors on a per match and a per season basis.

 

I apologize, but I am unable to find any coherent argumentation why in Badminton decisions would be "anti" players. This may be a language issue, I'm assuming you mean "commiting" instead of "commuting" and "challenges" instead of "referrals".

Why is that the case? In most situations, a close shuttle is a smash, and it would be imho more rewarding to see the attack win. But virtually all fans, players, coaches and umpires I talk to prefer the side that landed the shuttle on the line to win, and the side that hit it just outside to lose. I concur with that feeling.

The point of the limit on challenges is to make sure players don't waste time. I do not see a logical reason why we should give additional challenges for correct challenges - the time wasting potential has stayed the same, hasn't it? In any case, in practice, we rarely see players exhaust their challenges while at the same time getting many of them right.

This is a crazy proposition. There is no precedence for it in any other profession, much less for unpaid volunteers. Imagine how you'd react if your club would penalize you for every mistake you make at a match. Given the wealth of training material for playing vs umpiring, that would still be more reasonable than your suggestion. What puts your suggestion into pure lunacy territory is the exponential curve, which is untenable for any human processes.

In summary, I cannot see any structures detrimental to the players. But I do see a strong tendency to vilify the umpires for reasons which can be described as nebulous at best. If you really do think that the umpires are really doing a bad job, there is an easy recourse: Become a better umpire yourself! If the current state of umpiring is truly as atrocious as you assume (notably without a single fact to back it up), you should be able to rise to the top umpire levels at no time and show us how it's done!

 

Commuting was an auto correct issue. Referrals and challenges are the same thing and my out and not out were from cricket not badminton. Looks like you missed reading "ball" and "stump" before commenting. [MENTION=115949]phihag[/MENTION]
P.S. :--- I will make a horrible umpire in Badminton or cricket but a decent one in tennis. And I have already mentioned that badminton umpires have the best record when subjected to Hawkeye.
P.P.S. :-- I am sorry in case you are an umpire or related to one but please don't take/MAKE things personal.

 

I see few good top notch umpire who did terrible mistakes in the past. This is part of the game. Every technical official made mistakes at some point of time, not only in badminton. Let's not assume the worst part of them and be thankful that they have performed their task successfully in the end of the day. It might not be up to our expectation. But shouldn't be the basis calling them unprofessional. Not many people could sit up there and be an umpire. Bribing and monetary penalty are just too far fetch and imho too 'crazy'

 

Waste challenges? Did you mean waste time? In badminton there is no such thing as a waste of challenge because you are either correct with your challenge and you keep it or you are wrong and deservedly lose one. It seems to be the most common misconception with the challenge system that you only can challenge twice. It's not true you can challenge all day long, 100 times if you want as long as you keep getting it correct.

 

Well, under the current laws it's limited to 90 times, isn't it? That match would actually involve a bribed umpire.

 

Haha, well no actually you can challenge for the other side as well LD did it against himself and kept challenge so 177 limit I suppose.

 

Indeed, at least the last three videos contain incorrect decisions, but as you point out, that's only one incorrect decision per match. It is hardly surprising that some decisions are incorrect when there are roughly a million decisions per year being performed by humans under time pressure. Comparing these to e.g. unforced errors by the players, I am estimating the mistake rate of umpires to be quite on the low end, and certainly no evidence of bribery.

 

There seems to be no cases yet where umpires were bribed but certainly, there's always that possibility. In the past, it was always the players who got involved in some form of cheating or attempted bribery: https://sports.ndtv.com/badminton/danish-badminton-players-approached-to-fix-matches-1511198

Maybe this sporting event isn't that yet strategically lucrative enough to attract the interests of some syndicates or vested interest groups.