Umpires and the future
With the dark nights still very much here winter nets start to emerge out of the foggy January gloom of the winter days.
After an amazing trip to the Arctic Circle I have had time to reflect on a new subject to talk about this month. My attention quickly turned to umpires and how they are recruited following several posts on my social media accounts by clubs (who have been made to do so by league rules) posting about finding umpires for the 2026 season.
A lot has been written about the decline in umpires and various
things league to make sure there are officials in league matches at the highest
level (I’ll get onto lower levels in a bit) but I always feel there is no grasp
of the social and economic things impacting the whole adult population of the
UK and how these things outside of the ECB’s or any county board’s control need
to be considered in the future when recruiting not just umpires but scorers,
club and league administrators.
OK Boomer
The phrase above is a much derided phrase from social media
and beyond, although mainly used a jibe by people like me to our own
(frequently on holiday) parents this is important for the rest of this article because
as with all generations of cricket clubs; players, coaches, parents come from a certain
generation at a point in time. Cricket mixes generations much more than any
other sport but when it comes to non-playing roles lets face it so much of it
relies on the retired generation and this is especially true when it comes to
umpiring. Various quirks of history means that the current generation who
historically would have provided umpires (60 to 75) have a very different life
to their parents but why does this impact how many panel umpires your league
has?
Lifestyles
First things first one factor that I believe has changed the umpire’s recruitment in recent years is the availability of cricket to still be played into much later ages. County over 50/60/70 teams are taking over midweek daytime cricket by storm with counties in the Southeast providing 4 or 5 teams in senior age groups. This helps to keep players fit and sharp meaning they are still very much keen to play as long as they can, my own father is still keen to play as much as possible yes, he has done the umpires course but while he’s still fit to play and the 4th team need him he’s going keep going. This shift has been brought about by the massive health changes from one generation to another people fitting the “traditional” umpiring age bracket have enjoyed massive improvements in medical care over their lives, the proportion of manual jobs has declined massively and in combination with advances in health and safety in their working life, out of cricket injury has become much less than certainly their parents generation. Tie that into much less smoking and better diets you have a whole generation of people who would have previously umpired due to health reasons now playing much more. Clubs may have decreased but clubs with 4+ teams is now not unusual in many parts of the UK meaning that old players are still needed to fill gaps in these teams made up of juniors playing the first season of adult cricket. Health and the abundance of cricket on offer means you don’t need to umpire to stay in the game anymore.
Income
Now this one is certainly a gripe within the battle of the
various generations. I do not want to inflame tensions between politicians or people,
but I do think it’s an important subject to cover in and around this subject. Better
retirements plans, paid of houses and pensions keeping people in good living
has nicely coincided with a world of travel at people’s fingertips. Weather its
winter sun, cruises or just weekend cottages apart from the brief COVID blip
your not stopping the 60+ generation on their trips. Compare this to my own
grandparents who only left the UK a very small number of times and my cricket
playing grandad only once in his life, it’s not just income but the connectivity
of people and the world, you might say this about young people, but all generations
are on their phones all the time. People don’t need a few quid for umpiring,
but this isn’t the reasons most people do it the key change is people don’t
need the cricket club for their only connection the outside world each week.
Something that links to the above statement is how society
has changed and how couples in the bomber generation lived though and era of
changed perceptions, the idea of men down the club and “the Mrs” at home or
doing teas is very different now. This feeds into holidays together and a
societal shift that many established married couples of the new 60+ generation
are also best friends, not that they were not previously but it felt it was almost
an unpopular thing to mention out loud.
So even if plenty of the bomber generation were to give up
playing on weekends there is a high chance this time is filled with much more leisure
activity than ever before with many locations catering to such, go to my gym in
the middle of the afternoon and the age bracket there fits this description, facilities
are busier than in evenings.
So, let’s get back to umpiring, well it’s the same argument people give about player participation, administrative roles and why the days of 1000’s of paying spectators are a thing of the past in club cricket. There is simply way more to do with your life and the generation who we would seek umpires from in any other era before now have the money (generalisation of course not to belittle anyone who fells they do not) trudging out in April and May while people moan about a marginal wide or if they nicked it or not seems well a bit mundane.
Transient Populations
This final factor links more to the millennial generation as
opposed to their parents but it is a factor within this process. As explained throughout
many club umpires specifically are Dads and Grandads of club players leant on
to help the club by officiating. But the children of the traditionally targeted
age bracket are now much more widely spread and more of that generation has
moved to different towns and cities in search for work mainly because of
graduating during a financial crisis, when you couple this with city teams
having more players who’s parents either live or are born overseas it reduces
the pool significantly. I could not lean on my dad to umpire for my team, I haven’t
lived in the same town or city as him since 2011, in my Saturday team there is
only one player, from that city by birth. All this points towards the fact
there needs to be a new outlook to this problem through factors outside the
control of cricket the traditional routes to umpiring specifically have changed.
So, what about the future?
Well, I feel that anything other than maybe tiers 1,2 and maybe 3 in some areas can expect panel umpires in the future if you’re not playing in this level, you will just have to accept there isn’t any. This seems very different when I moved to the North, played all my junior seasons in the West Midlands in 4th,3rd and even 2nd team where there was never a sign of a panel umpire. I moved down South where a club umpire was required and panel umpires were only for the very top leagues, this worked well in a sense but it wasn’t fun begging people to umpire especially those who were competent to play, I would always take any punishment for not taking an umpire and allow that person to play 4th or 5th team than “make” them stand out of club duty. The big shift came when I moved North where it felt that umpires were expected in standards and by players who in my other experiences wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting an umpire. Given my level of cricket, I’ve played a lot more cricket without panel umpires than with but in Yorkshire people around me assumed umpires were coming. Now they are dwindling though it causes problems people haven’t grown up without them and umpiring as a player or club umpire is harder work because decision making comes half the time with mild to serious indignation that it felt has been internalised in the South and Midlands though many years of no umpires. So, there is an element of given the factors above you might just have to suck it up, this is likely to go for scorers also.
What can be done then?
Well, you might think that all this information might be a
bit defeatist, nothing we can do, and we just must suck it up. Well, I think
there are a few tings that cricket, ECB and County Boards could think about in
their push to still have officials in the higher levels of club cricket.
First things first before I go into the next section is that
all the factors above apply to the two groups of people I am going to mention,
therefore this isn’t about changing things but casting the net wider to recruit.
The first group of people under-represented in umpiring are former
players from Asian and Caribbean backgrounds. Apart from a brief periods
playing for a South Shropshire village and Tunbridge Wells I have played most
of my cricket since I was 9 in urban environments (Black Country, South London,
South Yorkshire) and cricket mad urbanites like me are wholly indebted to
players from Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Afghan and Caribbean backgrounds to
their commitment to cricket, because who on earth would I play with or against
week in week out?
But this still hasn’t quite in my experience filtered down
to the officiating in league cricket where ratios are still skewed towards
retired white men. I think with initiatives such as SACA and Ace working hard
to readdress the balance in professional players and bring more cohesion in
club cricket there is no reason this cannot also help older generations to take
up umpiring and other administrative roles. This is about casting the net wider
and I think these organisations and others working within counties to do
similar work could add the need for umpires to their agendas although I
appreciate integrating young talent into the professional game is always going
to be a bigger driver. But with IPL money coming then I would hope the budgets
for this work also increase in future.
The next one is very similar but has a very different future,
in my area and throughout the counties women’s cricket has taken the world by
storm. Divisions in softball cricket and hardball cricket have exploded. This
has been a great addition to clubs having more games, members and just people
using their facilities. Speaking to the parents of younger female players they believe
that we could eventually move towards a system more akin to Australia where there
are significant formal women’s leagues on a Sunday (as there is now) but there
is no longer a need to play in Saturday league cricket to keep skills up and
make sure you play against the best. As women’s cricket becomes less thinly spread
this is a genuine future for the sport which opens the possibility to more
female officials covering all games. I enjoy my Sunday’s umpiring my wife’s
softball games due to the quirks of the game I’ve had the Laws of Cricket book
off the shelf most afternoons looking up various things, but my hope is that
when women’s cricket continues its journey me and other husbands and boyfriends
helping out are replaced by former players from women’s cricket getting into
officiating.
To reiterate both these suggestions, have the same
constraints due to what I have explained earlier but by widening the net this
helps to acquire more people to help umpire either on panels or as club umpires.
A while ago I saw a post on local media about a young female
cricketer who wanted to make their way into umpiring on Saturdays and beyond (link
to story), this got me thinking about how it’s still a closed shop
professionally and if this can change. Historically umpiring and several other occupations
were the bastion of former professionals looking to have a retirement plan in
the days of county and even international crickets not having the best wages.
This have moved on significantly and new money for franchises has changed the
complexion and I feel from someone looking from the outside that professional
umpiring being a closed shop for former players should be a thing of the past.
This would be excellent if younger people who didn’t want to
play or could not for some reason had a future in officiating professionally,
even if they fail in their dream club cricket benefits from their development.
I have played with people who have officiated professionally in football, its
well documented the abuse and how the FA has worked to prevent his from
happening to young refs, but the key thing is there is a dream of doing it professionally
for a decent wage or additional income. Umpiring doesn’t have this and therefore
how are we supposed to attract people to it, if someone as I said played club
cricket and was a football league referee until maybe 35/40 because they haven’t
played any professional cricket they cannot be an umpire as far as I can tell
from the ones who represent England on the ICC panel despite officiated the
highest level in another sport which would include all the necessary training.
This example could apply to many other sports not just football. To come back
to an example if a teenager maybe a women’s cricketer who isn’t keen on playing
on Saturdays wants to play women’s cricket on Sunday and umpire instead there doesn’t
appear to be any possibility of making a career out if it. This is short-sighted
in two ways it reduces the possibility of more umpires professionally and changing
the diversity of professional umpiring but also hinders club cricket because people
are not going to start on a completely pointless journey, if the pathway existed
club cricket in this example benefits from those developmental years. This is
just an example it can be anyone of any age who would face the same issue, but
it just reminded me of the story in my local news.
I hope you find this article interesting; my intention is to
show how umpiring came be part of a wider inclusivity debate and importantly
look upon it more like referees in other sports that has better professional
pathways for officials. I am keen to say none of this is to belittle current
umpires and officials who we are massively thankful for each week or to imply
they shouldn’t bother doing it but I think leagues and club need to get out of
the age old situation “we need an umpire” “well make so and so’s dad or grandad
do it” because if you’re a millennial your parents just have better things to
do and don’t feel the same obligations as their parents might have done.
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