Give the umps break they deserve
If you’ve played a bit of social cricket, or even some stuff in the lower leagues, chances are you have at one stage or another donned the white coat for a stint of umpiring. It sounds bizarre, but in what other sport would you get members from one of the participating teams swapping duties to officiate, with responsibility for making such game-changing decisions.
In many ways I find it refreshing that the general good integrity of club cricketers has allowed this longstanding tradition to continue.You see bad decisions, of course you do, but generally speaking they are honest mistakes; one of the worst I ever saw was our club chairman giving his own opening batsman out leg before for 99. You could hear the inside edge from back on the clubhouse balcony!
There is an accepted wisdom that because ‘everybody’ has umpired, ‘everybody’ is perfectly placed to do a better job than the guys we see officiating at the game’s highest level. I watched England’s second T20 with India last Sunday and heading into the final over – with eight needed from six balls – felt confident Eoin Morgan’s side would get the job done, wrap up the three-match series and return home with at least a nugget of satisfaction from a tour that has drifted from early anticipation to endless torment.
And I still felt confident England would win one ball later. Eight needed from five. Their defeat, as Peter Hayter very eloquently writes elsewhere in this issue, was not down to the poor decision by Chettithody Shamshuddin to give Joe Root out leg before when the batsman had inside-edged onto his pad, but rather the batsmen’s inability to play the situation with sound judgment and skill from the game’s remaining deliveries. If they had done that, I wouldn’t be writing this now, and the cricketing world would have had one less thing to get its knickers in a twist about this week.
Staying with England, their defeat in the third T20I was one of the most spineless I have ever seen; all too predictable as their batsmen succumbed to a leg-spinner who, while serving up a skiddy wrong ’un, was doing little more than dropping the ball on an awkward length. The shot selection was ludicrous and the execution more befitting of a six-a-side beer match.
The worst part is that it all gets swept under the carpet. Again, Peter Hayter argues this case far better than I could on page 22, but as an England fan first and foremost, I am getting sick of the excuses the management team keep wheeling out. Trevor Bayliss has a case when he says England have played ‘some’ good cricket. But surely the coach has to come out and deliver the reasons why we have endured such a horrific run of results in all formats of the game.
When the likeable Australian arrived in this country 18 months ago, it was his calm persona and the ability to take a step back that initially made him stand out. Now, he has to get tough and start making himself heard otherwise his tenure could be one of the great losses to the English game.