The development of first-class cricket umpires: Holistic exploration into the demands, competencies, and learning of the role

Within the world of sport, individuals always aspire to work at the top of their profession. As a result, there has been a growing amount of interest in the study of expertise and what makes an elite performer (e.g., Baker & Farrow, 2015; Farrow, Baker, & MacMahon, 2013). Bourne, Kole and Healy (2014) described expertise as elite, peak, or exceptionally high levels of performance on a particular task or within a given domain. Whilst expert performance and expertise has been widely documented in the athlete, research has paid less attention to the expert performance of other key stakeholders e.g., officials. A sports official is “someone who controls the actual play of a competition (e.g. umpire, referee or judge) and administers the rules and laws of the sport to ensure the proper conduct of a sporting fixture in a safe environment.” (Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, 2023). Although officials are considered vital to the sporting environment, as their decisions have the potential to influence the overall outcome of the match (Larkin et al., 2011), research has shown an increase in the scrutiny of officiating decisions and consequently an increase in the volume of verbal abuse directed towards officials (Dawson et al., 2022; Livingston et al., 2020). The current research attempts to provide a valuable contribution to the sparse officiating literature, but it also provides knowledge of expertise within an unexplored population within the officiating world: the cricket umpire. Moreover, the programme of work had the umpire at its centre by offering umpires a platform to voice their opinion of the i) demands of high-performance cricket umpiring; ii) the key competencies of high-performance cricket umpires; and iii) the opportunities that high-performance cricket umpires' access to facilitate the development of the competencies that, consequently, enable them to meet the demands of the role. Adopting Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory as a theoretical lens, a total of 11 demands (aligned with the Micro-, Meso- Exo-, and Macro- levels of the environment), 6 Competencies (Cognitive, Functional, and Social), and 7 Learning Opportunities (Formal, Informal, and Non-formal) were extrapolated from the data to form a framework for the professional development of cricket umpires. The results were discussed in-line with previous literature and recent organisational advancements (e.g., a competency framework for recreational officiating).