BCCI to film all domestic matches to assess umpires' performances

Mumbai, Aug 30 (UNI) The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has decided to film all the first-class domestic matches and some select junior level matches to assess and grade the umpires, from the coming season.

The cricket board wanting to improve the standard of umpiring in the country after noticing that not even a single Indian umpire had made it to the Elite panel of the ICC, formed a special committee which recommended the filming of the matches to grade and assess the umpires instead of only relying on the captains' reports, the BCCI stated today.

''At present, we have the system of assessing the umpires purely on the basis of points given to their performance at the end of each match by the rival teams' captains and the match referee. But at times, we have found that winning captains give top marks to the same umpires who have been rated as poor by losing teams' captains,'' BCCI Joint Secretary M P Pandove said.

''The special committee formed to assess the umpires comprising Srinivas Venkataraghavan, S K Bansal and V K Ramaswamy has recommended that we video shoot all the matches to help them in grading the umpires and recommending suitable ones to the ICC panel,'' Pandove, also the convenor of the umpires' sub-committee of the BCCI, said.

UNI GS GB PDS VC1850