Umpires to the fore in Ipoh

The Azlan Shah hockey tournament has been going on without break for almost 20 years. Every year, they manage to get some of the best teams in the world for what generally happens to be the season-opener international competition for most teams.

At times some teams bring their B side; often, they are full-strength. What remains an issue is the umpiring. The worst example of awful umpiring was seen during the India-Australia match on Sunday. It was a perfect example of how bad umpiring can ruin a perfectly good and competitive match.

At least thrice during the match, there was confusion when both on-field umpires gave different decisions. At one point, Korean umpire Shin Dong Yoon indicated carrying on play while Dutch umpire Roderick Wijsmuller signaled an advantage for Australia. As a result, players from both sides could not understand what to do.

The worst was in the dying minutes of the match, when India defender Rupinder Pal Singh dived to clear the ball. Umpire Yoon signaled a foul, which was acceptable, then asked for play to restart. But then Wijsmuller not only yellow-carded Rupinder – who had scored the equalizer for India – with six minutes to spare, he also awarded Australia a penalty corner! One fails to understand how one umpire could change a decision even as play has already restarted, that too without consulting the other on-field umpire!

The match saw horrible umpiring, especially from Wijsmuller. The violation that saw Rupinder carded and Australia getting a PC was identical to another, earlier one committed by Brent Dancer against SV Sunil. What happened after that was a farce. Wijsmuller almost took a yellow card out of his pocket, then called Dancer close, gave him an oral warning, and put the card back! It was a scene rarely seen in international hockey. Most interesting was, both the umpires in this game were supposedly neutral – that is, not from any of the seven teams in competition here.

There are some who claim, or gossip as it were, that any match that Australia plays will get decisions in its favour because they somehow are awesome in reputation, least of all to please the Tournament Director, Dallas Riseley, an Australian. That may be stretching it too far but there is no doubt that the TD’s report at the end of a competition does matter when the umpires are up for review to be promoted.

This is not the first time atrocious umpiring has raised its head here. India coach Harendra Singh, though visibly upset by the horrendous and clearly biased umpiring, refused to comment on individual cases. Instead, he asked for use of more technology. “I can’t understand why when we have the technology we refuse to use it. Improvement in level of game must happen in all fields — not only from the players and coaches but also umpiring,” he said. It is something that the FIH needs to answer.

Harendra also said that when the top seven teams in the world are playing here and at least five of them are playing their almost full side, why can’t the umpires also be from the top level. None of the umpires officiating in this tournament are from the elite panel of FIH.