A comparison of leg before wicket rates between Australians and their visiting teams for test cricket series played in Australia, 1977-94

Leg before wicket decisions in test cricket series have sparked some controversy in recent years. In particular, series played in Australia have drawn much criticism from the media and from individual players in visiting teams, as well as from the general public both in Australia and overseas. It has been suggested that the umpiring in test series in Australia has been biased towards Australian teams. This paper uses logistic regression to analyse data from the test cricket series played in Australia from 1977 to 1994. It is found that, of the seven teams which have played against Australia over this period, three have significantly higher rates of leg before wicket decisions given against them than were given against Australia. Although this could be seen to be due to a bias towards Australian teams, other factors could account for these differences.