The Swiss simulation event
If computers are to decide, then let computers play the game
Years back, when ubiquitous surveillance was just getting underway, I heard a story of a chap who was stopped in his car at a red light when, all at once, he heard the urgent thunder of a fire engine siren at his back. A glance in the mirror confirmed: blue flashing lights and a large red tender trying to fight its way through the traffic to save life and property. And he was blocking its passage. What would you do?
The criminal law is fairly clear in such situations. First, you are under a duty not to wittingly hinder the passage of those who would succour to the aid of others in a life-or-death situation. The question here is whether the motorist stopped at the red light was acting such as to hinder the life savers with their very loud siren right behind him. I don’t think many of us would stop to analyse the situation in such terms. We would just manoeuvre our car out of the way, and that is what this chap did.
Second, when he did that, another provision of the criminal law was triggered. His car broached the white line at which the Road Traffic Act requires motorists to stop when a red light is showing, and, for that statutory offence (for which no test of intention is required), he was fined. For running a red light to let a red fire engine through. The law against running a red light has no interest whatsoever in why you ran the red light. The motorist’s pleas that he was allowing a fire engine to continue on its way to help save lives and property was irrelevant: the appeal was dismissed.
The World Cup has now thrown up a rather similar situation. We have what is being referred to as the “VAR mistaken identity” incident as occurred in yesterday’s game between Switzerland and Argentina. To put it succinctly, an Argentinean player tackled a Swiss player, and the Swiss player fell. Many argue that the tackle was legitimate, a part of what makes football football. However, the referee was not satisfied, and issued the Argentinean player with a warning, or yellow card. Up to this point we are in the pre-surveillance world. We are in the world in which a motorist can edge over a red light to allow a first responder vehicle to pass and no one would ever be any the wiser. On the football pitch, referees are there to referee, and some make good decisions and some are bad. And the players always know that sometimes they’ll get the benefit of the doubt, and sometimes a minor injustice will be meted out to them. If they don’t drum that into you at football academy, then their instruction is sadly wanting.
At this point, then, the surveillance kicked in. A man watching the game on ten or more different screens in a darkened room several hundred miles away from Kansas flipped a switch and had a word with the referee. He said he had been wrong. The Swiss player had been going to fall before the Argentinean player consummated his tackle. The Swiss player, said the video assistant referee, or VAR, had pretended to be tripped by the Argentine. He had, in the vernacular, simulated.
The difference between the statutory offence of running a red light on a public highway and the computerised intervention in deciding whether an incident comprises a tackle, a dirty tackle or a simulation is that, if a camera on a road determines you have breached the white line, then you are guilty, regardless of your intention. All it does is tell the law-enforcer what you did—the actus reus. But if a VAR on a football pitch determines that you have fallen over before you are actually tackled, it is able to determine that you did not fall accidentally, that you intended to fall with the intention of thereby inculpating a player on the opposing team and that you therefore intended to commit simulation. That’s three intentions—mens rea. Patently, any player can, if they please, launch themselves onto the grass any time they wish: it’s a free world in that sense. Simulation requires that they do it in order to derive a benefit over the other team, to procure an advantage that is not due to them by dint of a foul committed by their opponent. And that is a hard call to make in some cases. None more so than this one. The decision lies with the referee. He is judge and jury. The evidence comprises that which he sees and hears. But the evidence includes the electronic evidence of the man hundreds of miles away in that darkened room. And that means two things: first, it is better evidence than the evidence of the referee’s own eyes and, second, some would argue, and I am among them, it is not the evidence on which football or any sport is designed to be played. It is the evidence on which computers are designed to play sport. Not humans.
Cricket is a slow game played fast. It takes four days for a test match, in which the ball regularly travels at over 100 m.p.h. Because the main umpire is not best placed to judge certain potential offences under the laws, and in part due to the dynamic of the game, in changing ends every six balls, there is a second umpire who stands at “square leg” position, 90° to the side of the “facing” batsman, being bowled to. I remember clearly one particular test match in which the ball was batted fairly forthrightly to the offside, and after a little hesitation, the batsmen decided to take a run, before returning quickly to their wickets, as the ball was fielded, but was then so slovenly returned to the wicket keeper that the keeper missed it and it rolled out towards deep fine leg, which wasn’t occupied. The leg slip … legged it after the ball and caught up with it, then wheeled and lobbed it to the keeper, who missed it again and it rolled off to deep cover for a boundary four. Meanwhile, apart from their initial abandoned attempt, the batsmen had run a total of three runs. So, the scorer enquired, how many runs had in fact been scored? The two umpires met midwicket and replayed the incident in their discussion, which was not so easy since their attention had alternated between deep fine leg (at 2 o’clock on the pitch), deep cover (at 8 o’clock) and the two batsmen, crossing and touching their bats down in the centre of the pitch, but having not actually completed their initial attempt at a run. With much gesticulating and finger counting, the umpires determined that, in fact, the score for that play had been the unusual figure (for cricket) of seven runs, credited to the facing batsman.
They had no computers, and they had to make a fair determination based on what they had seen. True, there were two of them, but that’s how the laws are designed: they decide. The players always acquiesce in what they decide, because the umpire is human and the players are human and somewhere in there, we understand each other, and we understand that mistakes get made. If computers are to make the decisions, then let computers play the game.