sub-standard umpire gave a free point to Okuhara in first set

Discussion in 'BWF Destination Dubai World SS Finals 2015' started by sojayen, Dec 13, 2015.

  1. sojayen

    sojayen New Member

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    first set, Okuhara leading 12-5, shot by WYH called out. umpire adjust the score to 13-5. WYH challenged the call. score remains at 13-5. replay shows shot was in. umpire announced the score to be 13-6 :confused:. play continued :eek:

    WYH team didn't notice :(. Okuhara team didn't notice :( ??? commentators didn't notice. match officials didn't notice. no one bothered to double check.

    WYH fought back and led 20-19. the correct score would have been 20-18. she would have 1 extra point to close out the first set. but we all know what happened next. the rest is history.

    too bad for WYH. congratulations to Okuhara (i sincerely hope she didn't know the umpire's mistake at that moment). but the win wasn't "clear cut" due to poor umpiring at a critical moment. pity both the players as one bad mistake by the umpire spoiled the whole match... :(

    BWF please buck up and ensure this doesn't happen again in the future ! :(:(

    p/s - i am amazed by Okuhara's ability, but winning it this way spoils it!!! (at least for me) :(
     
    #1 sojayen, Dec 13, 2015
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2015
  2. Airos

    Airos Regular Member

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    really?!!
    If that is true then WYH was robbed. She did not have any luck today.
     
  3. sojayen

    sojayen New Member

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    yup. watch the match again. here's the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy8KM43aQAw
    continue from 14:00 onwards.

    i guess team WYH when they review the match video, someone's gonna go berserk!

    hope they will lodge a complaint with BWF and obtain an official apology from BWF. and on this sub-standard official, make sure he is properly trained before being allowed to officiate another match!
     
    #3 sojayen, Dec 13, 2015
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2015
  4. Maurice MJC

    Maurice MJC Regular Member

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    Oh please. The score would not have been "20-18" as you put it, that's a pure logical fallacy: the score would have been 12-6 and absolutely nothing indicates that this point difference would have given "1 extra point to close out the first set" to Wang Yihan when she was 20-19 up (that's a real stretch and it is very unfair to Nozomi Okuhara).. At that point in the match that was 1 extra point to come back in the game. That's a shame that a mistake such as this happened at the final, but it's both bad faith and very dishonest to say that an extra point at 12-6 "would have" (as if it was a absolute certainty) prevented Okuhara from reaching 19-20 at the end of the match. For all we know it could have motivated Okuhara to fight even harder and beat Wang Yihan something like 21-18.

    I agree that's such a mistake is unforgivable in a tournament of this caliber but you cannot in good faith make the statement that had the score been at 12-6 it would have been 20-18 at the end. No one knows what difference it would have made on the conclusion of the match. The issue would be different if the mistake happened at 18-17 though.

     
    #4 Maurice MJC, Dec 13, 2015
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2015
  5. visor

    visor Regular Member

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    Good that you noticed this, even I missed this, as the players, coaches, commentators and spectators did too!

    Isn't there some failsafe feature in the scoring software to prevent this? Hopefully in the future this doesn't happen again, because after all this is the lead up year to Olympics. Can be quite embarrassing if it happens during OG.
     
  6. renbo

    renbo Regular Member

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    I think the coach (CJ) should have been the one to notice this. The failure is his.
     
  7. Justin L

    Justin L Regular Member

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    Is that so? Really, nobody noticed it. If the correct score should be 20-18 to WYH as you claimed, the course of the match might have developed differently indeed. We may never know how 12-6 or 13-6 may lead to eventually , whether it'll be 20-18 or 20-19 later, but it's certainly a one point disadvantage that may prove decisive one way or the other in the end.

    Too bad, what's done cannot be undone. I'd argue the onus is more on the umpire and the tournament referee (shouldn't he be watching the proceedings?), less the coaches who are likely to be just as engrossed as the players. After all, it's the umpire who is keeping score, he made the mistake, not the coaches. And as we know, often the coaches protest in vain if the umpire refuses to budge or sees it otherwise.
     
  8. pcll99

    pcll99 Regular Member

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    nobody noticed it at the time.

    umpire, referee, coaches, players, commentators and people here at this forum!! Everyone missed it!

    incredible!
     
  9. blabl

    blabl Regular Member

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    To be honest I realised it during the match but then I don't know what to do. I cannot call up the bwf to let them know so I just ignore it at that time.
     
  10. Justin L

    Justin L Regular Member

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    That showed how exciting, thrilling , and well-fought the match was, that we all got carried away.

    In my humble opinion, WYH played better but lost on fitness, but I've admit that's a lame excuse, for fitness as well as mental toughness, are part of the contest in professional sport at the highest level.

    The heartening part is WYH's fitness issue is not tricky to address, she is still 27 years old, age is not a constraint yet. Skills limitation or worse still, mentality issue, would be more problematic. For WYH to beat Intanon, a very capable player, 12 times in a row is a phenomenal feat; it demonstrates mental strength for, I believe, by the law of average, IR should get one or two back, say by trying something different or, hopefully, catches WYH on a bad day.

    Finally, going by how WYH played in that match with Nozomi, if WYH carries on playing like that next year when the new season starts, I'm quite positive and optimistic we would see her among the very top few contenders for the remaining tournaments up till and including Rio 2016. In that case, WSX and LXR too will have to step up if they are to vie with her for one of the two spots in Rio.
     
  11. Justin L

    Justin L Regular Member

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    Remarkable, you are so alert, observant, and focused - you should make a good tournament official.
     
  12. phihag

    phihag Regular Member

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    Never having umpired a court with IRS, I don't have first-hand knowledge of the details, but looking at other challenges, I think the umpire is supposed to press the Challenge button first. In this case, the challenge was quite late, so the umpire had already entered the new score.

    How do you envision a fail-safe feature for this occurrence? I'm fairly certain Visual LiveScore doesn't have one. Since I am working on improving the state of umpire software, I would very much like the details of how this fail-safe should work.

    Basically, one needs to determine the minimum possible time between a point and a challenge. For me, this is rather low, on the order of 1 or 2 seconds. With a higher interval, the reverse (deducting a point) could happen when an umpire enters the score late, the player serves to the sideline and then challenges immediately.

    For reference, here's my timeline:

    24:22 shuttle lands
    24:23 line judge says (and presumably indicates) Out
    24:25 Wang Yihan points at the umpire
    24:26 Overlay score display changes to 13:5
    24:28 Wang Yihan makes Challenge gesture
    24:29 We see the umpire display where the score is already 5-13
    24:32 Umpire presses Challenge button
    25:13 IRS result shown on screen
    25:17 Umpire announces "Correction, In".
    25:26 Umpire announces "Service Over, 6-13"

    I think the lateness of the challenge was a major factor - the umpire should have either rejected the challenge or pressed Undo first.
     
    #12 phihag, Dec 14, 2015
    Last edited: Dec 14, 2015
  13. Techno

    Techno Regular Member

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    I think I've seen the same mistake on one of the lower-level tournament (like GP Gold or smth) that went completely unnoticed but didn't really matter in the end. Think there'd better be some double-check on such major events though...

    Agree the main reason here is the late challenge which broke the umpire's routine.
    The only way I see to prevent such cases in the future is to set some delay in the software which will send the actual signal to scoreboard only in case there was no challenge rised within the given timeframe (which is now about a couple of seconds I believe).
    Not to confuse the umpire the score should probably be changed at his screen without affecting the actual scoreboard.

    Alternatively pressing the challenge button should cancel all the changes done to the score within the recent 3-4 seconds. Should be save enough, imho.
     
  14. phihag

    phihag Regular Member

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    How would that have helped? Also note that this will most certainly incur major confusion and dissatisfaction among umpires, players and spectators, and add an additional item to the umpire checklist (wait a couple of seconds before checking scoreboards).

    That would not have helped either in this case, since the interval between score press and Challenge press was about 6 seconds - see my timeline. If the umpire presses late and the players are already ready when he does, 4 seconds could also be within the timeframe for a challenge.
     
  15. Techno

    Techno Regular Member

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    Well, rules say the call for a challenge should be done immediately after the shuttle has landed and the call has been done.
    I'd say challenge button should be "disabled" at all a couple of seconds (or whatever interval should be considered legit for a challenge + a second for umpire's reaction) after the changing on the scoreline.

    Regarding confusion - I've seen a number of tournaments already where main scoreboards are a bit late and scoring on the tv-picture is even further late. Nobody was bitching about it. :)
    Doubt that 2 seconds will make much of a difference - it takes much more time for players to start a new rally even when they aren't wasting time around.

    Also there'd no additionaly item on a checklist. I haven't said the change should be done to umpires but to the software they're working with. That shouldn't affect their routine at all.


    If we don't put any strict timeframes on these calls there's only proper training of the umpires that's left. :)
    And since there're gonna be up to 2 challenges per each game from 2016 umpires will probably get more used to them and work out their own working routine without any advises on the forums. =)
     
  16. phili

    phili Regular Member

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    I don't think it will be a big problem in the future. I guess the umpires have some kind of debriefing and this might have come up there. Also the challenge system still is rather new and because there is only one court equipped with the IRS many umpires aren't that used to it.
    The main problem with the IRS itself is its speed. At one tournament (I think China Open) it was very slow (almost 10 seconds per call). This really needs to be faster, around 2-3 seconds per call but that is another topic. :rolleyes:
     
  17. phihag

    phihag Regular Member

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    I am not sure I understand this proposal. First of all, that would require the umpire to enter the decision that's being challenged before pressing the Challenge button, right? That's one more button press in a stressful situation, so you'd have to factor that in. Secondly, what happens if the umpire decides the challenge is legit, sees the button enabled, but the button gets disabled just as he presses it? That's a totally avoidable raised right hand, plus confusion and forum posts about umpires being idiots in the making. Thirdly, since the timeout surely must be above 10 seconds (after all that's how long it took here), isn't there a serious risk of the reverse (point, serve to sideline, Challenge button press) happening?

    A bit late as in <2 seconds may be ok. I have personally witnessed multiple times players becoming confused and discussing as soon as the delay approaches ~5 seconds. Twice, players even tried to serve from the wrong side! Without a microphone, players do rely almost exclusively on the scoreboards.

    In any case, how would delaying the scoreboard help in this situation?

    But the scoreboard must be accurate during the preparations, because players rely on it to know who's serving, especially at national levels! I certainly don't want to encourage more time wasting.

    I was referring to RTTO §3.3.1.4 - umpires must check the status of scoring devices. Currently, after each point, the umpire goes down the list

    1. Make own decision
    2. Look at line judge
    3. Consider to overrule
    4. Look at players for challenges
    5. Enter new score
    6. Announce new score
    7. Check whether scoreboards are correct
    8. Check that players are standing in their correct courts.

    The proposed change of delaying the scoreboard, while not helping in any way in the first place (and this is a very rare situation to boot), would add a major delay and uncertainty, especially when the scoreboard takes longer to update due to technical difficulties.

    It's way easier and safer to show and discuss this cautionary tale in umpire trainings, which I am sure will happen, than to modify the software in the ways you have suggested.
     
    #17 phihag, Dec 14, 2015
    Last edited: Dec 14, 2015
  18. phihag

    phihag Regular Member

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    10 seconds is blisteringly fast. In this instance, it took 44 seconds.

    If HawkEye allows the IRS umpire to watch the shuttle at 0.1x the speed and can isolate to 0.2 seconds, the review must by necessity be at least two seconds long - and that's just the time it takes watching, not deciding and entering the result. 2-3 seconds is not realistic without a total redesign of the IRS system, most obvious an automation of the whole review.
     
  19. phili

    phili Regular Member

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    My stubby fingers and the numpad weren't working well there, meant to say 40 seconds but it seemed to be longer than this challenge. My sense for time might be a bit off then. ;)
    I know how this system works and I wanted to implicate that the system needs to be automated but this is not the thread to talk about changes to the IRS.
     
  20. renbo

    renbo Regular Member

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    No need to change the system. Just make the players and coaches watch tHe score when they challenge.
     

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