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 3