Players should be grateful for the referees
The current ill-tempered series in South Africa is the exception these days, writes Scyld Berry
Like many complicated skills, officiating an international cricket match looks simple – until something goes wrong, as it has from the start of the four-test series between South Africa and Australia, which will forever be remembered for bad blood, not good cricket.
One thing has led to another in South Africa: verbals on the field in Durban were almost followed by fisticuffs in the pavilion between Australia’s David Warner and South Africa’s Quinton de Kock; Nathan Lyon fined for bouncing the ball near AB de Villiers after running him out; Kagiso Rabada brushing against Steve Smith after he was dismissed in Port Elizabeth; two South African officials reprimanded for fuelling the fire under Warner. In New Zealand, meanwhile, their matches against
England have taken place without the TV commentators picking up a single sledge.
The moral is that umpires must never let the verbals get out of hand to start with. Once the sledging starts, one volley of abuse leads to another. Most of the time, however, international cricket is very efficiently run and trouble is nipped in the bud. It is in the quiet but firm word by an umpire out of the range of the stump mic, and in the quick visit by the match referee to a dressing room at an interval to warn the captain about a certain player, that the skill lies. The disrepute into which the South Africa v Australia series has brought Test cricket was actually a common feature of the 1980s when all Test countries were fully professionalised. England’s captain Mike Gatting was squaring up to Pakistan’s umpire Shakoor Rana; West Indies’ Michael Holding, intensely provoked by New Zealand’s umpire Fred Goodall, was kicking a stump out of the ground; Pakistan’s Javed Miandad was brandishing his bat to strike Australia’s Dennis Lillee; the racial abuse was often hideous. Viv Richards raged against it so that nobody dared to bully the West Indies, but that did not stop white nations piling into the new boys of Test cricket, Sri Lanka.
One man more than any has turned the game around, so that South Africa v Australia is the exception. In the mid-1990s, the International Cricket Council chief executive, Malcolm Speed, sounded out former Sri Lanka captain Ranjan Madugalle to recruit a panel of recently retired Test cricketers as match referees.
Their job is “to ensure a match is played according to the laws, playing conditions and the spirit of the game,” Madugalle said after the one-day series between New Zealand and England (ICC officials cannot give interviews during a series). “It is also to assess the umpire, the grounds, safety and security, and to be conduit between the two teams to make sure there are no issues.”
The principal of neutral umpires had been established in 1989-90, to the eternal credit of Imran Khan, who brought in two English umpires, John Hampshire and John Holder, to officiate in Pakistan’s Test series against India.
Gradually the ICC’S executive board approved one then two neutrals for every Test. Yet a balance is maintained so that new umpires can be tried at home by standing in T20 internationals at both ends, and at one end in ODIS, as their pathway to the top.
Given the absence of hostility between England and New Zealand, the issues affecting their current series are more related to grounds. The old rugby stadiums are being phased out in favour of new “boutique grounds”, with natural pitches and beautiful settings, but the ICC officials have to ensure they have super-soppers for drying, and high-quality practice nets indoors and outdoors, bowling machines and suitable hotels with gyms.
The match referee collates this information and forwards it to the ICC, so all countries who want to access it can prepare for future tours. Before a series of any kind, the match referee, the umpires, and the umpires’ assessor meet both captains/managers and coaches to discuss possible trigger-points: playing conditions for the series, such as the use of floodlights, extra time available, the type of balls to be used, what kind of DRS technology will be made available and the general expectations for the series.
“Each series throws up a challenge,” Madugalle said. “It could be player behaviour or pitches favouring the home side or favouring pace or spin too much.”
Toothless? During the Ashes he marked the Melbourne pitch “poor” so the most august ground in the southern hemisphere risks being banned from staging international cricket.
Personally, I think Test officials have done an excellent job in cleaning up international cricket without sanitising it. It is good that Big Brother is listening, watching and officiating. At the least, even if South Africans and Australians cannot resist dishing out abuse, it is no longer racial.