Thread: Help me to provide a fair playing field for our players....

Soon after the Semi-Final match against NZ, I made a strong protest to ICC asking them to not appoint deaf people as umpires..meaning to keep Rudi Koetzen out of the finals. I opened a thread here in this forum and gave members the link to the ICC feeback site, so that everyone could express their opposition of Rudi's presence in the finals. Believe me, I received many discouraging comments from many of our fans, noting no matter what we said to the ICC, they will have the most senior umpire Rudi standing along with Steve Bucknor. Except one or two, none cared to even support my cause and the efforts.
As a Sri Lankan fan who does everything to increase the chances of our team winning matches, I was very hurt and disturbed by the very few support I received for the thread I opened,
"Lets contact ICC and ask them to keep Rudi out".

Thanks Hilal for your support when the world found out that Rudi has been replaced by Aleem Dar, and it was only you who even cared to thank me.

On another note, let me tell the forum that, I started a campaign about an year ago and wrote to ICC to get an On-Field umpiring challenging system in place.
What that means in summary is, with such a system in place, when Rudi gave Chamara Silva out LBW in the Semi-Finals, Chamara could request Rudi to consult the 3rd umpire to review the play using TV slow motion. Then, when the 3rd umpire sees the ball clearly hit the bat on its way to the pad, he has the rights to reverse Rudi's decision and let Chamara bat on. Fielding side gets the same rights to request for replays when an appeal is turned down. However, both sides (per inning) would get only upto 3 such requests, if the umpire is correct. Meaning, if the On-Field umpire's decision was correct, the side that challenged his decision will be left with 2 more and so on.

When I initially posted an article about my proposal, I had good support from the forum, and they were all very encouraging. Few even gave me some good points which I compiled into my proposal letter to the ICC. I have received two letters from ICC's Dave Richardson so far with respect to that subject. In the last letter to me, he has indicated that such an umpiring challenging system is going to be experimented in the forthcoming English domestic season - In one of their One-Day tournaments. If the players and the administrators found it to their liking, they will approve it. Only then, it will be in place for the International matches.

Again, I am pleading the forum members to use the following link and ask the ICC to speed up implementing the "On-field Umpiring Challenging System" in International matches.

http://www.icc-cricket.com/icc/contact-us.html

If you would like to go a step further, please write a letter to ICC's Malcom Speed and/or Dave Richardson
and their official addresse is as follows;

The International Cricket Council
P.O.Box 500070
Dubai
United Arab Emirates

Thank you.