Umpires

Frustrated at the continual incompetence of a particular umpire over the past couple of months, Brad almost led his team in a walk-off.

Since the start of this year, a large percentage of the Popped Collars games have been under this umpire. All of those games have been riddled with poor decisions, through combinations of general incompetence, lack of knowledge of the rules, and him simply not watching the game. On occasion the decisions have gone beyond poor, and could only be described as incomprehensible. Xavier and Gareth had tried to find some amusement in it by playing several games of "count the howlers" - but that got old pretty quick.

Last week, in a top-of-the-table clash with Gold Diggers, the Brage-meter maxed out. Following one more insane not-out decision on a stumping, Brad - who was keeping at the time - removed the gloves, shook hands with the batsmen, and headed off the court. The opposition eventually talked him into staying on, and the game was completed.

The main purpose of this weeks blog was to have a brief rant, and to tell the story of the near walk-off for future generations to near marvel at. However, while I'm here, let's do some quick stats.

I haven't recorded umpires for all games, because in the beginning, at Weston, most scorecards didn't record  the umpire. However, I have recorded the umpire for all games this season, so let's check that out.

There are only 3 umpires at Kaleen at the moment. Dean (a.k.a. The Big Guy From Lyneham), Ash (That Kid), and the other one (I don't know his name, and choose not to list nicknames... probably both for the best).

Umpire	Games	Wins	Average Score	Avg Opponent Score	Win %
Dean	10	10	122.30	103.80	100
Ash	4	4	184.25	84.25	100
Other	6	3	122.50	102.33	50

Again, we see stats where there is room here for cynical observers to chime in: "You just don't like this umpire because you happen to have lost games while playing under him". No, that's just a coincidence.

Or is it? Is there some kind of psychological thing at play here? Sometimes sports teams seem to play to the quality of their opposition - they step up against strong opponents, and struggle against the weaker. Perhaps the Popped Collars play to the quality of the umpire!!

And we could use one other old game as some evidence of this:
We generally agree that Dean is one of the best umpires we've had over the years. Outside of this season, there is actually one other game for which I've recorded the umpire. It was this game (if you can't be bothered following the link and reading, it was the game where GG played with 4 players and won by more than 300 runs). And the umpire on that occasion was... The Big Fella!

Unfortunately, I have no stats to quantify the correctness, or otherwise, of umpires' decision making. There's yet another good reason to start videoing our games, as we've suggested in the past. Until then, we'll just have to keep playing Count The Howlers.