Is the Referee/Umpire biased towards the home team?

    Today, i was fascinated to read some findings from football matches played at home. There are many researches happening in football regarding various variables affecting the result. One research which I'm very much fascinated and able to relate is bias shown by referees towards home team. How the strength of supporters and their proximity to playing area affects the decision taken by the referees.
The studies has been conducted both in Bundesliga and EPL, both showed similar results regarding the bias by the referees towards home team due to pressure they get from the crowd.

"In line with the preferences of the crowd,



referees lengthen exciting games and favor the home team by allowing most


additional time when the home team is behind by one goal, especially when


the crowd largely consists of home team supporters. When relatively many


supporters of the visiting team are attending the game, the referee’s bias


in favor of the home team becomes smaller. Referees also prolong a drawn


match when the home team is more likely to score next, and favor the home


team in matters of penalty kick and goal decisions. Referees’ reaction to


the preferences of the crowd are more pronounced the smaller the physical


distance between the referee and the crowd is, so that it can be concluded that


the social atmosphere in the stadium leads referees into favoritism" 

The links are here, here, here and here.

Is it possible to relate the same for cricket? How much an advantage do the home team gets over the away team in cricket with umpires? There is no formal study I'm aware of but with my watching experience and reading articles available in the Internet i can state my points.

Actually the home team advantage can be split into two periods in cricket. The period before the advent of extensive use of technology & neutral umpires and the period before that.

There was a time till 2000 India was considered the most difficult country to tour with spinning tracks, noisy crowd and other variables. Here the umpires also played an important role, as they tend to give more marginal calls to the home team bowlers than the away team. The spinner will get more favourable decision in India than anywhere else both due to the pitch as well as the Indian umpire who is officiating as they know the pitch behaviour and the bowler better than the other umpire. India were unbeaten for several years during the nineties under Azhar but failed miserably away. Is the umpire bias can also be a factor for this?

The same can be said about other countries, still Australia is unbeatable at home and they get most of the marginal decisions in their favour. Is this due to their ultra aggression or home advantage? There is a saying that, Warne gets favourable decision on marginal ones because of the way he appeals which is more or less intimidating. It will be even more ruthless if it is at home.

This is the same case with Sri Lanka, they are a formidable opponents at home and teams have to work very hard to win there.

There was a time when away teams used to play against 13 players when they play in Pakistan.

Even after the introduction of neutral umpires, the opposition fans used to complain about umpiring when they play against Australia in Australia. Is this exactly what the unintentional bias shown towards home team? Is the umpires get intimidated by the presence of crowd and make fovourable decisions to home team.

It will be great if some one does a study about the same in cricket.