Cricket shouldn't need umpires anymore, suggests Kevin Pietersen

Former English cricketer Kevin Pietersen has often been in controversies due to several reasons, starting right from his cricketing days with England. An endless tiff with former captain and England & Wales Cricket board official Andrew Strauss led to Pietersen’s exclusion from England’s team mix.

His most recent comment on the case of umpires in the game of cricket can also cause a fire. The veteran batsman in his recent post on Twitter suggested that Umpires in Cricket should be done away with. Pietersen has in fact elaborated as to where this umpire-less implementation should be done and when.

Earlier, the England & Wales Cricket Board had confirmed that their new competition will be 100 balls a side and will be launched in the year 2020. The format will be made up of ten 10-ball overs, which can be bowled by one or two bowlers, in clutches of either five or 10 consecutive balls.

While it has already been taken up as a prospect at club level in the Midlands, where Warwickshire teams will participate in a competition involving 100-balls a side, as early as starting in 2019. Called as a trial at the Trent Bridge in Nottingham in September 2018, it was introduced as part of a new ECB five-year strategy for the game.

ECB chief executive Tom Harrison had said that the strategy that’s been created will give the whole game clear priorities. “The game has made huge progress this year, through collaboration, constructive debate and a volume of detailed discussion. The outcomes for all of this combined work are vital for the growth and sustainability of cricket, at all levels, in England and Wales,” he added.

Technology over umpires: Pietersen

 The 100-ball format was proposed in April as a way to attract new audiences to the game, largely by ensuring it gets shown on terrestrial television – and is viewed by a wider, potentially new audience. And in this light, Kevin Pietersen thinks that it will be a good idea to carry out play without the umpires. In his tweet, the 2010 WT20 winner for England wrote that technology is good enough to take over umpires altogether.

Here’s the tweet:

Cricket shouldn’t need umpires anymore!
It only needs someone to:
1. control the game.
2. Keep speed of play up.

All modes of dismissals can be decided with technology now anyway!

Maybe the 100 Ball comp in UK should think about this…????

— Kevin Pietersen🦏 (@KP24) March 30, 2019

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