Date-stamped : 14 Jan95 - 22:27 HAIR TO STAND ON END AGAIN - Mike Selvey Mike Selvey on the umpire whose dodgy decisions and reluctance to use television replays send shivers down England's spine WHEN England take the field in their last World Series qualifier in Sydney on Thursday they will not be encouraged to see that officiating at one end is Darrell Bruce Hair, a customer relations officer who has tended to blight their lives this winter. Hair today, gone tomorrow would not be amiss as a team motto. Hair unfortunately appears to have a blind spot - not a good thing for an umpire to have - with a particular disinclination to make use of the television-replay technology. Instead, on two notable occasions against England - first when the Zimbabwe batsman Grant Flower was given the benefit of a run-out and went on to make a match-winning contribution, and then in the Test last week when Mark Taylor was similarly reprieved - he has relied on his own judgment for a fine-line decision. On both occasions unsolicited replays showed him to be wrong. The argument is pretty clear-cut: either you believe that the umpires alone should make the decisions - the scope for human error adding a glorious uncertainty to the game - in which case the technology becomes redundant, or the umpire accepts that the television is there to help him (and the players) do a job. In the above instances - and for that matter a similarly high- profile and erroneous one last year in South Africa by his co- umpire in Sydney, Steve Bucknor - Hair's decision not to call in the third umpire bordered on arrogance rather than responsibility. Under the old way of doing things - the benefit of the doubt going to the batsmen - he was correct. But this is the modern age, and things are required to be done differently and more precisely. Hair, and all the umpires, have received a sharp rebuke from the International Cricket Council match referee John Reid and been instructed to make better use of what is available to them. Hair is under special scrutiny this series for he was in effect yellow-carded last year and advised that an improvement was necessary for him to maintain his status as an international umpire on the National Grid ICC panel of independent officials. Fortunately he and others like him are not representative of the effort that Australian cricket is making to put this particular house in order. It is now more than two years since Tony Crafter - the most experienced and almost certainly the best umpire produced by Australia - retired and a few months later moved from Adelaide to Melbourne to take up residence in the offices of the Australian Cricket Board. A post had been created for him - National Umpire Development Officer - with a brief to shake up the system and start producing, at all levels of the game, officials in whom players and public alike could have confidence. It is, admits Crafter, a slow process. Since he has been in office he has travelled the country conducting seminars and he has produced an umpiring manual along the lines of the one by England's National Association of Umpires and has plans to bring out a video. It is all grist to the mill. So is advice given to umpires on how to deport themselves, dietary advice (several have already benefited substantially from this) and regular medical check-ups including - pretty importantly - tests on eyes and hearing. Future umpires will also find themselves asked to submit to psychological testing, and current officials remain subject to reports from captains and observers, all of which serves to build up a comprehensive dossier. Crafter himself thinks there has been no improvement in standard in the 22 months since he began the job. But the seeds are sown. More umpires than ever before have been registered and the best are being encouraged by being targeted as "emerging umpires" who are then sent to officiate in junior tournaments such as the recent one in Perth for under-17s and under-19s. Yet ultimate improvement, Crafter feels, will not come until some who have played the game to a high standard can be persuaded to get into umpiring. Once, this was not so easy: players had careers outside cricket and left the game in their early thirties to pursue those other interests full-time. That is changing, however, with players who have actually earned a living from Shield cricket coming to the end of their playing days with no future career mapped out. Crafter believes this represents a large pool of untapped talent. It is unlikely that the next England team to visit Australia will see Merv Hughes and Steve Waugh ready with the finger, but it is the way forward. (Thanks : The Guardian, 10 Jan 95) Contributed by Ram.Krishnan (rkrishna@garnet.acns.fsu.edu)