V Ranganathan blog “substack”
Hard hitting piece written — an elegy of sorts in fact — by a good friend and fellow-Charteted Accountant of mine! It ought to be read and introspected by all senior members of the CA profession like you and me .
Let me resort to cricketing analogy to compare the plight of the Company Auditor today, what he stands for and what is his true stature in society.
There was a time in the past when stern on-field umpires functioned like true auditors too used to: they made sure the game was played according to the letter of the rules; strictly enforced the spirit of the game; warned erring or truant players; and were never afraid of asserting their authority.
By passage of time, the game of cricket proliferated beyond the world’s imagination and gradually transformed itself into a multinational and multi-billion dollar mass-commercial and purely profit-driven enterprise of entertainment. And when that happened the game became less and less of a respecter of its own laws and more and more of a slave of its own revenue-streams and profit-booking.
And when that happened it was the umpire who became the first casualty on field … the first guy whose relevance and stature began to be slowly chipped away, challenged and diminished.
Today we have this technological marvel called DRS that is, well and truly, virtual off-field” law-giver, law-arbiter and law-enforcer who is far more powerful than the on-field one …. !
It’s nothing but a piece of computer-software code embedded inside an electronically and artificially created intelligence system called decision-review-system —- DRS — that has virtually replaced the umpire, his stature and his time-honoured solemn functions.
It is the DRS today , not the umpire, which calls out “no-balls”, “run-outs”, “LBWs”, “stumpings”, “grounded catches” , and which even “signals whether the ball rolling over the distant boundary line should be declared a four, six or none”…..
The role of the on-line umpire today has been reduced to mere ceremonial pro-formality: mere keeping count of the number of balls and declaring an “over” over, declaring the beginnings and ends of sessions and stumps, adjourning and resuming play before and after rain interruptions …. and ruling the odd “hit-wicket” or blowing the whistle as it were when players “run on to the pitch”.
The days of the on-field cricketing umpire and the company auditor are, alas, numbered indeed … and for pretty much the same reasons: Irrelevance and Anachronism.
Both institutions are heading towards terminal desuetude.
Sudarshan Madabushi