DUBAI // Clive Lloyd wants to see an end to neutral umpires in Test cricket, arguing that the best officials should be able to stand in matches involving their own national team.
When Lloyd's West Indies team dominated international cricket in the 1970s and 80s, the two standing umpires were always provided by the host nation.
In a bid to ward off increasing animosity over sporadic claims of hometown bias, the ICC adopted a policy of having independent umpires at either end from the 1990s onwards.
Lloyd, who is the chairman of the ICC cricket committee, is now part of a task-force charged with investigating the merits of the Umpire Decision Review System.
And he believes the increased use of technology will assist a move back to a policy of selecting umpires on merit, no matter their nationality.
"Why shouldn't an English umpire, or an Australian umpire, be allowed to umpire at home?" queried Lloyd.
"Why are you telling me that I am elite? If I am an elite soldier I will be sent to the front. If I am an elite businessman I am going to be upstairs doing deals.
"Cricket is no different. If we are going to say these are the best people then I can't see why they can't stand in a home Test.
"We have to trust the system and trust the people. I trust all umpires. I don't think there are any who go out there to cheat.
"They want to move up, and you can only do that by being a very good umpire. I think that is one way of showing people we have moved on, if you can have one home and one away umpire."
pradley@thenational.ae
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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Ads on social media can 'normalise' drugs
A UK report on youth social media habits commissioned by advocacy group Volteface found a quarter of young people were exposed to illegal drug dealers on social media.
The poll of 2,006 people aged 16-24 assessed their exposure to drug dealers online in a nationally representative survey.
Of those admitting to seeing drugs for sale online, 56 per cent saw them advertised on Snapchat, 55 per cent on Instagram and 47 per cent on Facebook.
Cannabis was the drug most pushed by online dealers, with 63 per cent of survey respondents claiming to have seen adverts on social media for the drug, followed by cocaine (26 per cent) and MDMA/ecstasy, with 24 per cent of people.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
