Providing excellent support for umpires and referees

The ICC’s new Umpires and Referees Manager, Vince Van Der Bijl, writes about his role and explains the changes that have been made to the support structures for the game’s top match officials.

The maxim, that match officials perform their role perfectly, when they aren’t seen or heard and allow the game to flow naturally is being severely challenged by the intense scrutiny of their actions by TV and other media combined with the game’s new lucrative offerings and the accompanying increasing focus on results, statistics and outcomes.

The idiosyncratic nature of cricket has historically highlighted the almost beautiful human frailties of players and umpires and was once the very essence of cricket. But of course the game today is big business, global and very professional and with this comes the drive for perfection not diverse character, the drive for increased revenue not amateur informality, and the drive for order and standardization as opposed to rejoicing in the games foibles.

Yet, beneath this surface, there is a deep understanding, from administrators to followers, that cricket thrives and has true meaning only when the glory of the amateur spirit shines through.

It is within this dichotomy that match officials - umpires and referees - must officiate and perform. Cricket lovers, and indeed players, want match officials to be attractive characters and personalities yet perform with robotic consistent perfection. Ironically, the demands on the players are very, very similar.

Against this backdrop, the ICC has set about re-structuring the services it provides to match officials over the last 12 months, increasing the support, mentoring and training functions to accommodate these new pressing challenges. The role of my team is to provide excellent support services to this current group of umpires and referees. The focus is to improve the consistency and overall performance of the Emirates Elite Panel of ICC Umpires and Referees and to ensure that others can fill their shoes in the future. The actual implementation of this new strategy with new role players is now beginning.

The match officials prepare, train, develop in the areas of mental and emotional control, physical fitness and hone their individual skills in a similar way to the new brand of players. The role of my ICC Dubai-based support team is to create the environment to allow the match officials to excel, reach past their potential and above all enjoy what they are doing. As we know, international cricket umpiring is one of the hardest officiating tasks in world sport. The decision-making involves multiple factors and fine margins that have to be assessed in the blink of an eye.

Cricket is fortunate to have a group of extremely talented decision-makers on the Emirates Elite Panel of ICC Umpires and Referees. Our new team of five Regional Umpire Performance Managers, under Doug Cowie, the Umpires High Performance Manager, will be responsible for working closely with our Elite and International Panel as well as the Home Boards reviewing performance and working on areas of improvement and structuring the necessary programmes from fitness through to decision-making under pressure. These regional managers will also work closely with the national cricket boards in established and emerging cricket countries to identify and develop the elite umpires of the future.

We will also be introducing an elite accreditation programme in 2009 that will become mandatory for new international umpires, ensuring that all officials that are appointed have the right combination and standard of technical skills and management competencies.

The role of the Emirates Elite Panel of ICC Referees has evolved from an informal back-seat one to becoming an integral and crucial part of the game’s administration. The referees have to be fully prepared for a wide range of potential scenarios as they are required to take important management decisions quickly during a match. They are often unseen, yet are tasked with wide managerial powers, and underpin and facilitate the smooth running of international matches with all their increasing complexity.

We already have an excellent group of international match officials. Our collective challenge is to foster a culture that, like a cricket team, strives for excellence on and off the field. I’m looking forward to working with this talented group of match officials.