Association of Cricket Officials Issue 28 | Page 3
designed to provide umpires with further knowledge and soft
skills to enable them to become members of league panels. It
will be available for all members who have attended the Club
Umpire course and it is intended that candidates can either
take this immediately after completing the Club Umpire course
or not, as appropriate for them. The Club Umpire and League
Panel Umpire courses are intended to replace the existing
L evels 1 and 1A. Both courses were trialled in February and are
now undergoing final amendment as an outcome of feedback
and observation of the courses in practice, and in order to
incorporate the changes to MCC Laws, once these are
published in March. The third level, Premier League Umpire, is
designed for experienced umpires who aspire to stand at the
highest level of league cricket and is available for all members
who have attended the Club Umpire and League Panel Umpire
courses. As well as dealing with more advanced interpretations
and application of the Laws, it will also cover practical aspects
of umpiring as they apply to Premier League cricket,
emphasising the importance of teamwork, support and
engagement with all stakeholders.
It is important to emphasise that ‘education is for all’, so these
courses are designed to be both suitable and available to those
umpires who, although not aspiring to league panels or Premier
League panels, still want to develop their skills to be the best
umpire they can be.
We also recognise that face-to-face education and training is
not convenient for everyone who might want to do a course,
whether an umpire or a scorer, or whether a prospective new
official or an experienced one. Online learning is an alternative
that we must explore – and we are doing. The Club Scorer is
the first of our courses that has been fully converted to be both
a face-to-face and an online offering, and although it is early
days, the signs in terms of the numbers of prospective scorers
signing up are more than encouraging. This year will therefore
see us press on with the conversion of other face-to-face
courses and the development of a completely new set of
modules, clips, texts and training videos as continuous
professional development (CPD) to any member who wishes
to avail themselves of the information.
view to utilising resources from other sports and focusing on
some areas of generic top level officiating skills, it may be
of interest to know that we are liaising with Dr Duncan
Mascarenhas, Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology
at Wrexham Glyndwr University, and Stuart Cummings MBE
of Officials Consultancy Limited, both of whom were keynote
speakers at last year’s National Conference.
We are not looking just at course content and context, we are
also looking at how we can make it easier for prospective
officials to ‘find us’ and book on a course, whether face-to-face
or online. To that end, Karen Cassidy at Edgbaston has been
working assiduously to develop an online bookings and
payments system. The benefits are mutually beneficial. For the
prospective official it is easy to register; they can pay online
and receive immediate confirmation of attendance and
information about the course via email. For the ACO, it provides
more options for marketing the courses via social media and
widgets to promote on County Boards and County ACO
websites. Less administration is required as candidates will
self-register; there will be no more time-consuming paperwork
to complete and all candidate details will be known at the start
of the course. It will be more efficient because with payment
upfront, resource numbers will be known in advance, resulting
in less wastage.
Player indiscipline and how it is managed remains an item at
the top of the agenda. We are all waiting to see how the MCC
deals with this in the new Laws, but it now seems certain that
they will be introducing on-field sanctions that umpires can
implement at the time, as well as resorting to the more
traditional reporting procedures. As and when this is
introduced (not this season but in 2018) it will primarily be as a
deterrent, but it will need a concerted effort to ensure that all
umpires are up to speed with what they can and must do if
players misbehave in a way that necessitates an on-field
sanction. More of that anon no doubt.
It remains for me to wish you all a happy and successful
season of officiating, wherever you are and in whatever
capacity you operate.
It will also be the basis for our fourth level course, the
Advanced Recreational Umpire. This is envisaged as a series of
online, stand-alone modules, which might also be used as CPD
by all members, but which would be compulsory for all those
aspiring to the highest levels of recreational officiating. With a
email us at [email protected] contact us on 0121 446 2710
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