ICC to bring back neutral umpires soon: Chairman Greg Barclay
"We are now the other side of the COVID and we are reintroducing the neutral umpiring arrangements," Barclay said,
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The International Cricket Council (ICC) chairman Greg Barclay has said that the governing body is planning to reintroduce neutral umpires. ICC was forced to designate home umpires due to the deadly COVID-19 that had brought all the global sporting activities to a standstill in 2020.
However, Barclay has also made it clear that there is no official confirmation regarding the same. While he did not wish to provide any information regarding the date due to operational issues, he assured that the system will be introduced soon. With the COVID-19 cases being reduced in the last few months, the stadiums have also witnessed maximum turnouts from the fans for watching matches.
We are now the other side of the COVID: ICC Chairman
“I think in the COVID days, the home umpires got some exposure to stand for Test umpiring. It split things a bit wider. If you look at the stats, you can see that there was a pretty much thereabout the teams’ performances than what we had the neutral umpires,” Barclay was quoted by Cricbuzz.
“We are now the other side of the COVID and we are reintroducing the neutral umpiring arrangements which was decided in the board meeting we had a couple of weeks ago. We will see neutral umpires back up and running again. I can’t give you the date due to operational issues but soon,” he added.
According to the Bangladesh newspaper New Age, there will be two on-field umpires during the Test matches and one of them will be neutral. Meanwhile, the match referee and TV umpire will also be neutral and the fourth umpire will be a home umpire. Nonetheless, the white-ball matches i.e. the One Day Internationals and T20Is will be officiated by the home umpires. In fact, the neutral match officials have been appointed for the ongoing two-match Test series between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
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