Umpiring and the Moral Code

This has more to do in the context of the "gentleman's game", since I assume, one aspect of a gentleman (nowadays there are ladies too) is to stand by what he thinks is just and fair.

A Moral Code gets its legitimacy from the assumption that every other person who has agreed to abide by it, put loosely, is a gentleman, or not quite so loosely, is a person of integrity.

In an amateurish game between people disposed towards each other on friendly terms, it is indeed an unspoken moral code that is in play—where the sense of competition is far surpassed by the sense of pleasure that one gets out of playing the game—and not a binding rule.

This Moral Code would say, "Either party may act according as one's observation of the state of affairs recommends, in consultation with one's own, and unambiguous sense of justice." Well it means, in simpler terms, that you walk if you are out!

Now, assuming that there arises a situation wherein the parties differ in their opinion of the outcome of a particular point played, upon which they must stick, out of the same sense of justice that the moral code requires of them, to their own versions of the result.

In such a case, though not ideal, to unlock the deadlock, one may modify the code to include the arbitration of an impartial observer, who in cricket would turn out to be an umpire.

Now the moral code would read: "Either party may act according as one's observation of the state of affairs recommends, in consultation with one's own, and unambiguous sense of justice.

In case there is an ambiguity in the observations themselves, then the decision of an impartial observer, as recognised by both parties, would be binding on the parties both," which would mean, you either walk, or if you are not sure, you obey the umpire.

Now looking at the moral code, and upon a little reflection, one could easily come to the conclusion that there is absolutely no need for the umpire to be absolutely accurate in his observations.

The important thing is that he/she should be acceptable to both parties on various grounds the parties may themselves choose, the only criterion being that an "unbiased opinion" be one of them.

Once accepted, according to the Moral Code, it is binding on the parties, to the extend that they run the risk of losing the legitimacy to say that they do follow the code, to accept the decision of the arbitrator, without questioning it.

The conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that the spirit of the code is captured in the act of completely following the decision of the arbitrator.

It does not rest on the arbitrator to uphold the spirit of the code by trying more than he could, to make decisions as numerically accurate as possible—not even on an electronic arbitrator, an instance of which, would be the Hawk Eye, an item that was alluded to, in one of the previous articles in these columns.

We surely do not see such idealism in reality. The urge to follow the ideal is surpassed by the temptation of success, which brings forth images of a hypothetical arbitrator with an absolute accuracy on his/her/it's observations, and that one would have stood to gain under such circumstances.

This forces one to complain, and against the spirit of the moral code, of the inadequacy of the arbitrator.

That the culprit in this case is the phrase, "one's own, and unambiguous sense of justice," need not be stressed here. It has not so much to do with the undecidability, with a very high level of exactitude, of the moral code, as to one's own refusal to accept what has already been set.

That it is greed for success that drives mankind to question morality is quite a well documented fact.