Umpire's Call - what cricket can teach the justice delivery system

Two Indian umpires - VK Ramaswamy and Piloo Reporter - were the first 'neutral' umpires to officiate a cricket Test match. This was on the urging of the Pakistan captain Imran Khan, who wanted to shed the tag of every home win by Pakistan being attributed to biased umpiring. Ironically, West Indies went on to win that Lahore Test by an innings.

It wasn't until 1992 that the International Cricket Council (ICC) experimented with one neutral umpire per Test match, and 1994 when this become mandatory. Only in 2002 did the ICC require both umpires in Test matches to be neutral umpires, and this was when it established the ICC Elite Panel of Umpires with eight initial members.

A lot has changed since the days when the nationality of umpires was the label of their independence (or their alleged lack of it). As with many spheres of life, technology has changed cricket umpiring.

What started with a TV umpire supporting on-field umpires on line-calls like run outs and stumpings has evolved into a Decision Review System (DRS) that also permits players to challenge on-field calls. The DRS includes slow motion replays for line-calls, the snickometer for audio monitoring of edges, and ball tracking (especially for LBW calls) that is based on contextual simulation of a ball's trajectory. All this action unfolds on the live broadcast for the third umpire and viewers alike.

We now have many years of data from the DRS, and it makes for fascinating reading.

So, what can the broader justice - and dispute resolution - system learn from the role technology has played in cricket umpiring?

Here are some obvious conclusions:

• Technology can prevent 'howlers' and increase overall confidence in the umpiring ecosystem among both participants and the public
• Technology trumps the human eye in making line-calls like run outs, stumpings and no-balls
• Recent changes to 'no-ball' tracking can allow on-field umpires to focus on the action at the other end of the pitch

Here are some of my beliefs:

• Umpires prefer to have their obvious errors corrected by technology, but prefer to retain some discretion and, thereby, authority over the proceedings
• LBWs - and the umpire's calls these involve - are the most controversial, being premised on the need to not undermine the on-field umpire's authority and an implicit acceptance of the margin of error in existing technology

Here are some things I am curious about:

• Given that teams have a limited number of unsuccessful reviews, do umpires sub-consciously alter their decision making criteria when they know a team has reviews left or, alternatively, has exhausted its quota of reviews?
• At what point will technology accuracy remove the need for the 'Umpire's Call'? Will the on-field umpire have any role left at this stage?
• Are there any aspects of adjudication that human judgment remains better at than technology? When does that advantage disappear?
• Given that the DRS technology stack is a 'black box' to viewers and participants alike, does the confidence in the system (especially ball tracking, which is specific to pitch and conditions) come simply from the ICC's stamp and oversight of the private operator's capabilities and processes?

Why are these questions important?

The technology stack (especially artificial intelligence and analytics) is going to play an increasing role in the delivery of justice and in the adjudication of disputes across fora. Cricket umpiring provides us a ready laboratory to test - and shape - the rules of engagement and public perception.

This subject is ripe for analysis and research. What are the questions you would ask of the existing DRS data? What do you think you will learn? Do join the discussion.