Home umpires for Tests again?

qpeedore

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Hi guys, back for my usual occasional posting spree.

The World Cup is over, the Ashes are ongoing, India are making the West Indies look foolish, the Test Championship has begun. Some things change, some things don't (see: West Indies).

Some time ago the ICC decided that having home umpires might be seen as unfair to visiting opposition. For Tests at least. I believe in ODIs and T20Is they still do one home, one neutral. But with the review system now seemingly on the way to working out some of the early kinks, would it be fair to go the way of the shorter formats and allow home umpires again?

It's been proven in the first Ashes Test that even two neutral umpires can't decide out from not (although to Mr. Joel Wilson's credit, he DID only just receive news that he was appointed to the Elite Panel, nerves would have been present...Mr. Dar had much less excuses to choose from). Either way, the review system is in place and once we have the side on cameras at both ends, the front on camera, the edge mic, and ball tracking, can we at least see our homegrown umpires?

Discuss.
 

CerealKiller

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Can you imagine the noise if two English/Australian umpires had made such mistakes in an Ashes Test? We should never go back to home umpires. It will just cause useless controversies.
 

Aislabie

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Yeah, neutral umpires are a good thing from the perspective of the umpires' own wellbeing. Take the average club cricket match; if you cop a bad decision from the opposition umpire, then the default assumption is that you've been triggered, and that some sort of nefarious bias is afoot. Sometimes that might be the case (ahem, Shakoor Rana, ahem) but that's probably more likely to be an honest mistake. Now imagine the reaction of the batsman's team, but multiplied by a billion Indians, or tens of millions of English fans.

Indeed, extensive statistics have shown that in international matches involving non-neutral umpires, those umpires have shown a small but statistically significant bias against their own nation that may be borne of a desire not to appear biased, whether or not they are biased.

Imagine if Paul Reiffel gave Virat Kohli out wrongly when India needed ten runs to win a home Test series against Australia. Now imagine him trying to get back to his hotel safely.
 

qpeedore

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Then make it consistent across the board. Neutral umpires for everything, not just Tests. Hell, my perfect scenario is one home umpire, one away umpire.
 

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