IPL 2020: Umpires call, it's time to end that sad hands-crossed act of contrition

Dubai - The umpire is now a pawn to technology and needs to check every development

You have to be a sadist to be a cricketing umpire. A more unloved position is difficult to imagine. And if there is any act of contrition in any sport more soul destroying than in cricket, I have not seen it. That humbling crossing of hands in ostensible apology is so visually pathetic that it is almost impossible to believe this very person now wearing sackcloth and ashes is going to recover his position as the master controller of the game.
Why not just whip him? Surely, there can be a more genial and acceptable gesture like maybe a shrug of the shoulder or a wave of the hands like you were dismissing the earlier decision.
Give the guy a break. It is bad enough the dice is loaded against him and one bad decision eclipses fifty good ones without making a lampoon out of his dignity. He might as well kneel and genuflect for all its worth.
Also, there is a need to address the umpire's role in its entirely. Robbed of that spontaneity which fed the so called glorious uncertainty of cricket, you now have him signalling for a confirmation to a run out every time the stumps are broken, even often when the stranded batsman is a mile and a half outside the crease.
Scarcely the air of authority there.
He is now a pawn to technology and needs to check every such development but then, he can give an 'out' arbitrarily and create all sorts of chaos and controversy between will they won't they reviews and that vague and frequently inexplicable cop-out of 'stay with your decision' pronouncement from up above which plebes like me fail to understand.
If no balls can be checked and rechecked before they are sanctified and the ball at the boundary rope replayed ad nauseam before the runs are granted, why should not the short runs get the same treatment and be reviewed up there where computers and screens and buttons and wires bristle like it was a NASA control centre.
Sometimes, you feel it was more fun when the umpires were human and fallible and there was an intrinsic benefit of doubt and the batsman fed off it and grumbled and growled and enjoyed being cheated out of his time at the crease. All this hi tech back up and the flaws still flow. Makes no sense.
 

• IPL 2019