Umpiring any cricket match is hard: the concentration, the fineness of discrimination, the possibilities of blame. Umpiring an international cricket match must be a definition of pressure. But just put me in that white coat baby - and rush me some of it!
I guess even the most exalted cricketers still get the chance to umpire at a junior level. Nevertheless most of them seem to forget what it felt like as soon as they’re given out (as they will swear blind) wrongly. As England batter Mark Ramprakash was once alleged to have said to an offending umpire ‘you’re messing with my career’.
To be entirely impartial, to have the required intense self-inspection before giving the decision, to trust one’s eyes and ears – Solomon, thou shouldst have been born for this hour. I once found myself umpiring in a local league match as the umpire supplied by the team I sometimes played for. Northampton Town League Division Three. Kingsthorpe Recreation Ground. Weather: overcast. Number of spectators: zero. (The previous weekend I’d attempted one of my periodic comebacks from retirement, and my Achilles was giving me gyp. Just like Kevin Pietersen.) Anyway, the pitch was wet and slow, and our opening bowler was bowling extremely straight and well from my end. A succession of opposition batsmen allowed the low-bouncing ball to hit their pads in front of the stumps, feet immobile in the crease. With increasing anxiety I raised the finger to give the first three out leg before wicket and then gave up. At least a couple more could have quickly gone the same way – perhaps all ten might have done - but it didn’t seem worth creating a world record only to end up in hospital. Bias, you see, doesn’t always work the way you might think it should. Don’t apply for a job within your own organisation.
At county and international level there are ‘not-outers’ and ‘outers’. The one-time Leicestershire wicketkeeper Ray Julian was one of the former. The ball had only to strike the pads somewhere in the most approximate vicinity of the wicket for the Julian finger to be raised. Even the non-striker might have been in danger. The most famous umpire of recent times, Harold ‘Dickie’ Bird, was by his own admission mostly a ‘not-outer’. If there’s doubt, the rule is that the batsman gets the benefit, and Dickie invariably had a whole barrowful of doubts. He was an agnostic’s agnostic.
Contemporary television slo-mo replays suggest Bird’s instincts were right. As the police and courts know, what the eye sees is often not what has actually happened. Where formerly run-out decisions might have gone in favour of the batsman, the television replays now often show the batter struggling to make her ground at the point the ball breaks the wicket. Frequently batsmen are shown to have got fine snicks from their bat onto their pads, when they’ve been given out lbw. (There’s a school of thought which says it shouldn’t matter, but that’s a discussion for another day!) Equally well, it’s quite clear that in times past certain spin bowlers in certain Asian countries may have benefited from close ‘catches’ which never remotely saw contact with the bat. At one time the practice was so prevalent that there you’d think an extra law of the game had been written: ‘There shall be two umpires, one for each side’ - which is why now umpires in Test matches are neutral. None of which spares them controversy.
Thus it was that on the fourth day of this Test match, the South African Rudi Koertzen found himself under pressure for alleged inconsistency of practice in referring disputed catches to the third umpire ( the one with the TV screen) or not.
Now from the armchair Rudi isn’t my favourite umpire, and I tend to agree with those who say that he’s made quite a lot of mistakes in his career, but any philosopher, and any scientist worth her salt too, will tell you that the quest for absolute certainty is a vain one, this side of heaven. Sport without the ‘was he or wasn’t he?’ would be so much more dull. We rightly chase the possibilities of equality of opportunity in our political and social life, but sometimes there’ll be injustices in cricket. Get over it.
Close of fourth day’s play: England 425 and 311 for 6 declared Australia 215 and 313 for 5 wickets.
