Cricket umpires needed to keep players on the pitch

Source : ABC NEWS

Cricket umpire numbers across Victoria have increased significantly in the past 12 months, but in some regional competitions, they remain in short supply.

Since May, an additional 451 umpires have signed up in Victoria, taking the total to 2,666 active umpires statewide. 

Cricket Victoria’s general manager of premier and community cricket, Liam Murphy, said the recruitment represented a 20 per cent increase compared to this time last year. 

“We’ve had a significant growth trajectory over the last three years,” Mr Murphy said.

“Prior to that, we had some real challenges.

“COVID created a real challenge for our umpiring space, and what we’ve seen in the last two to three years is year-on-year growth.”

Junior umpire surge

Cricket Victoria’s focus has been on getting more underage umpires into the game.

Mr Murphy said as a result, junior umpire numbers had grown from zero a few years ago to 765 current umpires. 

“The learning and development programs that we’ve run in recent years have really led to a greater connection within our community space,” he said. 

However, Mr Murphy said there were still challenges in pockets of the country and metropolitan Victoria.

Sunraysia Cricket Association, in Victoria’s north-west, has only 13 active umpires across the league to umpire 21 senior games.

The association’s director of umpiring, Chris Howes, said in theory they need 42 umpires. 

“We could potentially have one umpire per grade if we had at least 24,” he said.

“We’re probably a good 15 short of where we need to be with our umpire numbers.”

Mr Howes said the association was mostly umpiring first and second-grade matches, but was still occasionally short on numbers for the seconds.

He said recruiting more umpires was a difficult task. 

“We’ve seen a lot of the time you try and recruit past players … they’re the best umpires to have because they’ve played the game and know how it all works,” he said.

But he said the growth of masters cricket in recent years had contributed to the decline in numbers.

“Over the last few years, with guys playing over-40s, 50s and even over-60s and 70s cricket, they tend to extend their career playing cricket rather than maybe umpiring,” Mr Murphy said.

Of the 13 umpires in the Sunraysia association, three are more than 70 years of age, and six are over 60.

Mr Murphy said some preferred to umpire the lower grades, where the games were shorter. 

“We don’t have enough umpires, so they’ve been umpiring a lot of seconds cricket, which is 70 overs, so I know they’ve been struggling a bit on their feet,” he said.

Umpire shortage in the east

It is a similar issue for Bairnsdale Cricket Association in Victoria’s Gippsland region.

That association has about 12 umpires, but would need double that to comfortably cover all games across a weekend.

Bairnsdale Cricket Association umpires advisor and Victorian Premier Cricket umpire panel member David Kinsey said fewer young people were interested in cricket due to the length of matches and being out in the sun for hours in the middle of summer, which was also reflected in the umpiring numbers.

He said player behaviour towards umpires had also “slipped” in Victorian country cricket in recent years and was deterring a lot of people from umpiring. 

“People are less and less interested in taking direction from an umpire on the field, they want [to] do their own thing, they feel like they’re always in the right,” Mr Kinsey said.

“It’s hard to accept when you’re wrong, and someone else is telling you that you’re out or turning down appeals.

He said improvements to players’ behaviour would hopefully encourage people to stick around after their playing days were done.

“Younger guys and girls should be playing while they can,” Mr Kinsey said.

“And then once their playing days are done, bring that playing experience across and take up umpiring from there.”