The On field Decision Making Gurus. How Good they are?

[bullseye7]

The umpires in the past have been a great headache particularly for the touring team as instinctively they were prone to give quite a number of decisions in favor of the home team which at the end of tour resulted in a very sour relationship between the Boards.

Imran as far as I remember was the first one to recommend neutral umpires.

So we saw another phase where ICC had a panel of neutral umpires officiating.

The margin of errors were less . But teams were still not out of the woods with regards to bad decisions . We still saw sub continental teams becoming victims of poor umpiring decisions.

Then came use of technology phase where umpires had the option of referring specific cases to Third umpires where technology was used to make decisions which they thought were doubtful/unclear like doubtful catches taken, stumpings, run outs or balls clearing the rope or over it.

But we all know umpires are human and they are bound to make errors. Now it is comparatively safer and secure than the primitive stage

Lets now attempt to identify who are the quality ones with least mistakes and unbiasedness that has earned our credibility over the time on the basis of what we have seen either live, on Utube or cricket DVD

The following has won my heart.

1.Dickie Bird (England)
2.Simon Taufel (Australia)
3.David Shepherd (England)
4.Aleem Dar, Asad Rauf(Pakistan)
5.Rudi Koertzen(SouthAfrica)

It is a very tricky selection to make.

Who’s going to taka a shot next?

[AZ]

Taufel - Robocop, almost perfect

Dar - quite good, but one feels the pressure of appealing gets to him

Rauf - solid, looks like the love child of Gandhi and Ramiz Raja ...and always looks so sad when he gives an LBW

Doctrove / Bowden / Davis - pathetic umpires, lose them ASAP, especially Bowden and Doctrove

Rudi - annoying and very error-prone

the rest are pretty OK I guess

[Javelin]

Koertzen? - The guy many Pakistani fans disliked not that long ago, with only Mr. Hair being disliked more.
As for Shepherd, before neutral umpires were introduced, Pakistan asked the England and Wales board to have Shepherd replaced from their matches. The request was refused.

[saeed-sohail]

Top 5 I have seen
Aleem dar
S taufal
S bucknor
V raghvan
D bird
Worst 5
D hair
Jaya parkash
B doctrov
D constant
Javed Akhter

[Oxy]

Originally Posted by Javelin As for Shepherd, before neutral umpires were introduced, Pakistan asked the England and Wales board to have Shepherd replaced from their matches. The request was refused.

David Constant - not Shepherd...

[Saqs]

Rudi is long past his due date.