114. What was that for?

When you are watching a sport or a game, how can you be certain that what you are seeing is fair and honest?  

In how many sports or games can you be sure that it is the innate, natural ability of the competitors you are seeing and not the result of some medical enhancement or incompetent, possibly fraudulent stewarding by the appointed officials?  

There are some sports in which individual games or matches can certainly be affected.  Cricket, below test match level, is an obvious example of a sport in which certain passages of play, or even the outcome of the game itself may be determined by umpires who are either inept or who cheat. 

Nowadays, test cricket is probably “clean” although it wasn’t always so.  Until the introduction of “neutral” umpires (umpires from neither of those countries competing), some test umpires seem to have cheated as a matter of course or maybe, they kept making the same kind of error over and over again.

After the 1946-47 Australian test series with England, which Australia won 3 – 0, Wisden, the Cricketers’ Almanack and the adjudicator on all things cricket, said this:

“The weight of evidence suggests that the umpires were mistaken in giving Bradman not out caught for 28 in the First Test.”

Bradman’s innings eventually ended when he had scored 187.  Even Keith Miller, the Australian all-rounder playing in the game, wrote, 

“That decision was subsequently admitted in nearly every quarter to have been erroneous.”  

Bradman should have been out for 28.  

It was a crucial decision.  Bradman had defied medical advice to play in that first test match of that series and at the age of 38 and out for a low score, he might well have retired, but he carried on and in that series, he scored a further 652 runs at an average of 97.  The umpires for all five games in Australia in that series were Australian.  However, it is not just Australian umpires….

The Pakistani, Javed Miandad, was out LBW 33 times in test matches but only 8 of those were in Pakistan.  Between 1978 and 1985, Javed was never given out LBW in 24 One Day International matches he played in Pakistan.  

Since “neutral” umpires were introduced, this has been the effect on LBW decisions: 

16% of dismissals were LBW previously with home umpires but,

19% were LBW with two neutral umpires.  Pretty conclusive!

I cheated once.  On the last Sunday of the cricket season, the Finchley Over 30s were playing the Under 30s with the players umpiring on a rota.  It was a pleasant, relaxing end to the season.

When I umpired, I told a batsman that the next ball his brother bowled to him, no matter what the legitimacy of the delivery, I would call, “No ball” and so give him a free hit.  That ball was hit for six.  Everyone laughed - except the bowler.  

“That’s the first no-ball I’ve ever bowled in my life,” he screamed at me.  

“I don’t believe it.  You’re a cheat!”  

He was right - I was, but it was very funny.

Where to begin with rugby union?  I am certain that if the referee decided in advance that the points difference between two evenly matched sides were to be 12, he could fix it so that exact differential became the result and he could also determine which of the two sides won.

My first teaching job was at an all-boys secondary modern school where football (soccer) was the winter sport.  I introduced them to rugby.  After three months, I thought they were ready for their first competitive game.

I refereed the game against the local grammar school.  All the boys were 11 or 12 years old, but the grammar school team looked two years older than mine.  They were comparatively huge and after 5 minutes they had scored two tries under the posts.

Something had to be done - and so something I did.  I practised “altruistic cheating” for the rest of the game.  Not one of the players noticed.  Their coach did but he nodded approval and when I blew the whistle to end the game, about four minutes early, he grinned and all he said about it was, “Well done.”

My boys lost 21 – 9 but they were not humiliated.

Here are some extracts from the television commentators on this year’s Rugby World Cup that show how baffled they are:

	Wales v England
1	Commentator A:	“It’s a penalty to Wales.   No, it’s not.  It’s a scrum.”
2	Commentator A:	“…and the confusion caused leads to another Welsh penalty.”
	Commentator B:	“No, it’s not a penalty.  I think it’s a scrum.”
3	Commentator A:	He’s been penalised, possibly for collapsing the scrum.”
	Commentator B:	"No, it's for his binding."
4	Commentator A:	“England won it illegally and have given away a penalty.”
	Commentator B:	“No, the penalty is for offside a couple of phases before.”
	Ireland v France
	Commentator:	“There’s a penalty against Tommy Bowe of Ireland for going in with his shoulder…..Well no, it’s actually a penalty for Ireland against Nakaitaci (France).”
	Ireland v Argentina
	Commentator:	“It’s a fifty-fifty call but I think it’s a penalty to Ireland.”

Early in the second half of that game, the commentators gave up trying to give the reason for decisions.  “Penalty to Ireland,” or “Argentina scrum,” was all you heard.

I could have given dozens of other examples where the commentators made it clear that they didn’t have a clue as to the reason for a ruling.   

“What was that for?” is the most frequent thing said by one viewer to another while watching a rugby match on television.  

When a penalty is awarded, as it is after many scrums, neither spectators nor commentators often have no real idea why.  

If the commentators, with their expert knowledge of the game and with the best view in the stadium, can’t tell what the hell is going on, what chance do the rest of us have?

After the England/Wales game, this official statement was released:

“The World Cup refereeing officials have conceded that England were wrongly penalised four times against Wales.”

The Times newspaper identified those four penalties, three of which resulted in nine points for Wales.  They included the one kicked from nearly 50 metres that secured the decisive lead for Wales.  England lost by 3 points.  

Therefore, that game, the most important for England rugby for 12 years, was lost by England because of a referee’s incompetence.  

Scotland lost to Australia in the quarter-final because of another wrong interpretation by the referee when he awarded Australia a penalty kick two minutes from time.  The replay proved the error.  The kick went over, and Australia won by a single point.  

Jeremy Guscott, the ex-England rugby centre, was asked if rugby union referees are inconsistent.  He said that they were not but that the laws of rugby are open to interpretation because of their wording.  

If that is the case, then rugby union has become like ice dancing or synchronised swimming, where adjudication is subjective.  That is not satisfactory.

Footballers cheat and they always have.  Sometimes, their attempts to gain some kind of advantage are pathetically obvious and laughable but the cleverer ones get away with it.  

The contactless fall in the penalty area is the most obvious example of cheating but attempts to deceive the referee happen all over the pitch, from claiming throw-ins and corners when the player knows that he touched the ball last, to writhing in distressed agony following the most gentle of interactions with an opposing player.

Retrospective citing in football, as happens in rugby union is needed.  If a post-match study of the tape showed that a player had cheated, whether the referee had spotted it or not, he could be banned for two or three games.  That would stop it.

So, what sports or games can a spectator watch with the certainty that all is fair and above board?  Forget about athletics.

Before the 1988 season, Florence Griffith Joyner's best time in the 100-metres had been 10.96 seconds.  During 1988, in less than 12 months, she improved that best time to 10.49 seconds, a ridiculously huge improvement. The 1988 Flo Jo would beat the 1987 Flo Jo by nearly 5 metres.

In a 100-metre race, FGJ would beat the second fastest female runner ever, by almost 2 metres.  It wouldn’t even be close.  A “clean” athlete may never break her world record. 

When Flo-Jo died at the age of 38, the coroner asked that her body be tested for steroids (a banned performance-enhancing drug) but he was informed that there was not enough urine in her bladder for a test.  Hmphh!

Marita Koch holds the world record in the 400-metres, set in 1985.  Only once since then has another athlete come within a second of that time.  That record will probably stand for another 40 years too.

There appear to be very few clean sports or games.  There have been recent cheating scandals in both Chess and Bridge.  Beta-blockers, that can be used to stop a player’s hands from shaking, have been found in 36% of dart players, 25% of archers and 17% of the golfers who were tested.

Curling appears to be relatively clean and honest.  Only 0.3% of curlers tested positively for beta-blockers but does anyone really care about curling?

The tragedy is that cheating seems to start very early.  I don’t know who taught him to cheat (it was probably his Auntie Caroline), but my eight-year-old nephew, Timo, beats me at chess every time we play.

I have come to the conclusion that, possibly, the only event in which you can be certain that the best competitor wins, is the pole vault.  Performance-enhancing drugs don't seem to have any effect and he/she either knocks the bar off or doesn’t.

 

The Royal Statistical Society made a survey of LBW decisions and this is a summary of their judgements:

“The findings show clear evidence of fewer decisions in favour of home teams with neutral umpires."

Dr Sacheti, the lead author of the study, said: “Our results suggest that when two home umpires officiated in Test matches, away teams were likely to suffer on average 17 per cent more LBW decisions than home teams."

When the ICC introduced the one neutral umpire policy, this advantage to home teams receded to 10 per cent.

"When two neutral umpires were required in every Test match, this advantage to home teams disappeared. This result holds even when we control for the quality of teams, the ground where the match was played and so on."

The researchers found that the bias by home umpires in favour of home teams had been particularly strong in Test matches played in Australia, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The effect of neutral umpires has been that the total number of LBWs has risen with the away side’s % staying about the same but the % of LBWs against home sides increasing.”

So, before neutral umpires, 16% of all dismissals in test matches were LBW.

Since neutral umpires, 19% of all dismissals are LBW.

The increase of 3% has been caused by a rise in “home” side LBW dismissals.