There are two people who might be reading this whom I know for certain have never played cricket and will know nothing about cricket umpires and the impact they may have on a game.
Matthias speaks fluent English and I first met him some twelve years ago before they were married, when Joanna and he came to Wood Green to visit us. We went to our local pub.
In 1998, the Henley Arms in Myddelton Road, Wood Green was a proper pub. It hasn’t been done up since 1958 and the only ‘gastro’ thing about it was that you can eat either crisps or peanuts. It was smoky and crowded with people who got their hands dirty to make a living.
One of the regulars stood out because he was different from everyone else. I’d noticed him several times. From Monday to Friday, he would arrive at 12 noon carrying a large bag. He would sit at the same table in the corner, take three or four very large books from his bag and then occasionally write things on to large sheets of paper. At five p.m. every day he left. The pub was his office.
One day, I was sitting at a table some way from him while waiting for Caroline to meet me and wondering what he was doing.
To pass the time, I was attempting to do the Times crossword and I had completed perhaps five clues. Caroline arrived at last and sometime later I went to the toilet. When I returned three minutes later, Caroline greeted me with a very smug expression, brandishing a completed crossword.
Caroline is incapable of lying and I soon found out that the man in the corner had come over, picked up the newspaper and her pen, and then filled it in as quickly as he could write.
I got to know him very well after that and found out that his name was Mike Laws and that he was, "The Times Crossword Editor." He has had an interesting life. After Cambridge, he had fulfilled a lifelong ambition and became a postman and he remained a postman until he was over fifty. He stopped when he started compiling crosswords full time.
That evening, the four of us entered the pub and realised that the weekly quiz was about to start. I looked at our ’team’ and decided that we had potential and would enter.
Matthias was doing a PhD in some branch of physics; Joanna was paid to advise on environmental issues; I specialise in sport in general and cricket in particular, while Caroline claimed to be an expert on 80s pop. It was in the bag.
The only thing that bothered me was that one of the available prizes on display was 200 Rothmans cigarettes, but as one of the others was a monster bag of liquorice allsorts, we paid our entry fee and took our seats.
Mike was the question setter and the question master. It was not easy but Matthias lived up to the stereotype of a German scientist and kept us in contention. Joanna, Caroline and I added a little.
Round five was interesting. Words were given and we had to give a definition in four words or fewer. Only a professional wordsmith could mark such answers. The first one was, “parsimonious.” That’s the kind of word that makes you think, “Now I know this. Let’s put it in a sentence and think about it.”
“Mean spirited,” said Matthias immediately, while that process was going through my head. I stared at him. “Like penurious,” he said to help me out.
Round six was on pop music and Caroline exceeded all our expectations by correctly naming Phil Oakey as the only constant band member of the group, Human League.
However, Caroline really became the most talked about person in the pub during the interval activity. During the 20-minute break, every table was given ten small bowls of crisps and we had to identify all ten flavours. Caroline did it all on her own and would not enter into any discussion with us on the matter. Our table scored 10/10. The next highest score was 5.
Now to the point: cricket umpiring decisions are sometimes bad and a player can suffer because of a mistake. It is really only an issue if the umpire makes a wrong decision because of ignorance of the laws of cricket or if he cheats. I have witnessed both.
In the 70s, league cricket started in Middlesex and there were no ”neutral” umpires. Every club was expected to provide its own. Ours was Sam.
Sam was well into his seventies and despite having to stand for over three hours at a time, he loved it and he umpired more than 100 games a year. He once told me that he hated the winters because he never got to meet anyone from October until March.
Sam was a really nice guy but hopeless as an umpire. He was so bad that he was well known throughout the county. He lacked knowledge and insight. He gave me out LBW once when I had scored 87.
I was surprised as I was sure that it had pitched outside leg stump and would have gone on to miss leg stump. I said nothing, made no gesture and just walked off.
The golden rule for umpires is never to engage a batsman in conversation after giving a decision against him. It opens the gate for all the batsman’s anger and frustration to come spilling out. During the tea interval, Sam came up to me and said,
“Bad luck. I thought you were going to get a hundred. Pity I had to give you out.”
“You didn’t have to give me out, Sam,” I said.
“Yes, I did. I thought it might just have clipped the leg stump. It was touch and go.”
“So, you had doubts?”
“Oh yes. Still, never mind. There’s always next week.”
(Cricket law states that if there is ANY doubt in the umpire’s mind, the benefit of that doubt must be given to the batsman. It’s the law!)
The following season Finchley - my club - was playing Enfield. It was the last game of the league season and we were second, four points behind Enfield. All Enfield had to do to win the league was not to lose. If the game was drawn or they won, the title was theirs.
In those days there was no limit on the number of overs bowled in an innings. There was nothing in the league rules to prevent Enfield from winning the toss and batting for 6 hours, ensuring a draw. For us to win, we would have to bowl them out and then score more than them.
Enfield won the toss and batted. It was very boring, as they took no risks at all and just blocked ball after ball. After two hours they were 40 for 2.
Then, out of nowhere, our quick bowler produced a ball that pitched just short of a length and reared up at the batsman’s throat. He was taken completely by surprise and in his attempt to avoid the ball, stepped back on to his wicket. One or two of us may have appealed but I didn’t. There had never been a more obvious case of, ”Out, hit wicket.”
But, the batsman stayed. Some of our younger players began to harangue him. I walked up from first slip and said to him, “You’re out mate. Hit wicket.” He was unmoved and stood his ground. I turned to Sam and made a formal appeal.
“How’s that?”
“Not out,” said Sam.
“But the bails are on the ground.”
“Don’t worry,” said Sam, striding down the wicket toward us, “I’ll pick them up.”
The game was drawn.
Sam was also responsible for another of my foreshortened innings. Finchley was playing a “friendly” all-day game against an Australian touring side. We batted first and were about 180 for 3. The Aussies in their endearing way made a concerted, orchestrated, 11-man appeal every time the ball passed the edge of the bat or hit a pad. It was very annoying.
I played at a ball from their leg break bowler and was completely beaten by a googly (don’t ask - life’s too short) which went down the leg side. It was extremely well taken by the keeper who, in that irritating way that top-class keepers do, flicked off the bails with his right hand and let out a huge appeal. I wasn’t concerned, as I knew that I had not lifted my foot and had not left my ground.
I was disconcerted to then hear the fielders shouting, “Yes! Well done Wayne. Great take.” I looked round to see Sam, the square-leg umpire, waving his right index finger in the air.
After the game, which we lost, Sam came over to me. “Why did you walk? You weren’t out.”
“Sam, you gave me out.”
“No, I didn’t. You walked.”
“Then why were you waving your finger about?” I asked him.
“I was pointing at the keeper, telling him that he must stop making frivolous appeals.”
Syd, a friend of some thirty years, emailed me recently and suggested that we were both born out of our time and that if referrals to the third umpire had been in place when we played, he would have much better career bowling figures than he has.
I replied that my batting average, instead of being in the thirties would be 117.64 if all the LBW decisions that weren’t out, all the catches that were really bump balls and all the run outs that never were, could be taken out of the equation.
Unfortunately for Syd, his bowling average would actually be much worse!
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