Willey fears referrals will weaken umpiring

Peter Willey, the former Test umpire and chairman of the first-class umpires' association in England, fears that the referral system will harm umpires more than it aids them, increasing their reliance on technology instead of their own judgement. The system, so long used on a trial basis, will be introduced full-time into Tests from October,

"Umpires who have done Tests for five or six years have lost the art of giving out run-outs and stumpings - they just refer everything," Willey wrote in the October issue of Wisden Cricketer. "If you have all the technology for a number of years you are going to lose the art of giving out caught-behinds, lbws and everything else because the third umpire is doing everything for you.

"The umpire will end up hardly having to make a decision. Then he stops doing Tests and goes back into first-class cricket and he has to start learning again. It could be dangerous for an umpire's career."

Willey also said there would be a need to employ 'neutral' television technicians to operate the camera and systems. "I am not suggesting that anybody would be corrupted but if a country's top batsman has a decision pending and there is a 'technical problem' ("Sorry we've lost the pictures...") you will have to have neutral technicians. People think this is rubbish but at one stage nobody believed in match-fixing in cricket. How far do you go?"

He suggested that umpires stand for one Test per series to reduce the pressure on them, especially if they have a poor game. "I would increase the amount of Test officials and let them only stand in one Test of a series; if an umpire has a poor first Test he is under pressure in the next game - I don't care how strong you are you'll be thinking about having a bad Test. Change the umpires for every Test match so they are fresh with no baggage from Test to Test. When I umpired in Tests I'd do one Test abroad might make a few bad decisions, come home and it is forgotten. You have five or six weeks off then you go somewhere else."