We aren’t saying poor umpiring is solely responsible for either a loss or a victory, but it definitely either changes the course of the Match or shifts the momentum away from the aggrieved side, and can thus hurt a Team’s chances big time.

For the uninitiated, poor umpiring marred the initial stages of the tournament to the level that Mahela Jayawardene and a few other experts came out with statements regarding the same, saying the umpiring quality needed to improve for the tournament to progress. After all,  International Cricket is as much about fastidiousness as it is about entertainment. S. Badrinath even tweeted mentioning how poor umpiring has been affecting domestic Cricket since ages and how it was all coming to the fore because of the Indian Premier League where most of the umpires were domestic.

While the umpiring did improve from thereon, poor umpiring did return to haunt the tenth edition of the IPL in today’s game where Sunrisers Hyderabad was beaten by Kolkata Knightriders at the Eden Gardens. KKR batted first and riding on Uthappa’s dazzling 69 off 38, set SRH 173 to get. However, Uthappa, early in his innings seemed to have nicked one to the keeper. The Umpire, however, couldn’t get the sneak and hence ruled in Uthappa’s favor. Uthappa, along with Manish Pandey, went on to script the Partnership that put KKR in the Driver’s seat.

Later, when SRH were in the hunt and needed a gettable 61 off 31, Yuvraj Singh mistimed one towards long-on and was out caught. During the immediate replay, you could see the bowler clearly overstepping the line. The next frame, you could see Yuvraj Singh waiting and looking back at the Umpires as if he was asked by someone to stay. We all thought the umpires were checking on the no-ball, but the very next moment, one of the umpires reacted as if they hadn’t asked Yuvi to wait and signaled it was out. When the technology is at your fingertip, why not use it, we wondered! It was bewildering. With the in-form Yuvraj Singh gone, SRH had almost lost it.

Twitterati noticed the umpire howlers instantly and started tweeting right away.  Twitter was abuzz instantly and the umpiring howlers started trending.