REPORTING AN INCIDENT
Reporting An Incident [Non Panel Umpires]
Except for Panel Umpires, the way that disciplinary or other complaints and protests are made has changed. Unless you are a panel umpire, you must submit your report using the proceedure laid out in the document entitled 'Reporting an Incident'.
Briefly, the revised process requires a 'claimant' to:
Report an incident within 24 hours only to the Disciplinary Officer
Having made the report there is then a five day maximum period during which the complainant must gather certain information.
After the five day period if the Disciplinary Officer believes the submissions are enough to issue charges against the respondent, he will do so.
If after five days the Disciplinary Officer does not believe that there is enough information in the submissions to allow a fair result a small panel will decide if the complaint should go forward, or not.
In 2024 there were a number of complaints made that had little chance of success due to the lack of independent witness statements and the information provided by both parties was so far apart that the panel had no chance but to declare the result as 'not proven'. All disciplinary investigations and subsequent hearings take up a lot of time and potential complainants are rquested to consider if there is enough information for as panel of Disciplinary Officer to issue a penalty.
Reporting An Incident [Other than an umpire]
Disciplinary Reports and Written Complaints must only be submitted in good faith, i.e with honest intentions and containing correct information (to the best of theindividual’s knowledge). The primary purpose of allowing Written Complaints to be submitted byindividuals other than the umpire is to capture offences that an umpire did not see but which would constitute an offence if the umpire had seen it.
Disciplinary Reports and Written Complaints should include a description of the alleged breach including:
any relevant background information;
name(s) of any witnesses;
who was involved;
what the Participant(s) is/are alleged to have done;
anything anyone said at the time (including admissions and/or apologies); and
any information regarding any relevant evidence and the context of that evidence
(for example, information about a recording of the match, which captured the alleged incident or photographs taken and, if so, whether the parties involved were aware of and consented to this video footage and/or photographs). We refer to the ECB Live Streaming Guidance, which can be found here: