Don Oslear
Uncompromising cricket umpire who claimed that his investigations into cheating cost him his job
DON OSLEAR, who has died aged 89, was an umpire with a rare command of the intricacies of the laws of cricket, but his dogged insistence on probing instances of cheating that others might have let slide did not endear him to the TCCB (now the ECB).
Oslear was a collector’s piece among first-class umpires, having never played the game at first-class or even Minor Counties level – “I was never remotely good enough,” he told The Sunday Telegraph in 1981. Although he was much admired by players and by his fellow umpires, it was sometimes thought that he was too inflexible, perhaps in compensation for his lack of top-level playing experience; he was once described by Henry Blofeld as “a slightly tiresome stickler for the rules”.
His bête noire was ball-tampering. In 1991 he reported three instances in a month of the cross-seam being opened up on the ball while Waqar Younis was bowling for Surrey, and publicly criticised the TCCB for doing nothing more than issuing a written warning. (Younis would later become the first ever player to be suspended for ball-tampering, following a match in Sri Lanka in 2000.)
During the 1992 season Oslear was embroiled in another incident that would remain in the headlines for some years and see him testify in two highly publicised libel cases. He was third umpire when Pakistan were playing England in a One Day International at Lord’s, when the on-field umpires, John Hampshire and Ken Palmer, decided to change the ball after being alerted to slits in the leather casing.
Although the ICC match referee Deryck Murray agreed that the ball should be changed, the ICC took no subsequent action. Oslear believed that they were being pressured into silence by Pakistan “at the highest diplomatic level”. He wrote a typically thorough report on the matter but Sir Colin Cowdrey, the ICC chairman, pointedly reminded him that his contract bound him to silence.
Under mounting pressure from the press and the England players, the ICC eventually made an official statement, claiming that the ball in question was locked in a safe at Lord’s and that to show it to anybody would be “prejudicial”. But in truth Oslear had pocketed the ball himself and refused to hand it over: it found a permanent home on the mantelpiece in his bungalow at Cleethorpes.
The England batsman Allan Lamb was determined that the matter should not be ignored and wrote an article in the Daily Mirror headlined “How Pakistan Cheat at Cricket”. He was subsequently sued for libel by one of the players he mentioned, the Pakistan pace bowler Sarfraz Nawaz.
The case was heard in 1993 and Oslear’s turn in the witness box – described by The Daily Telegraph’s Tim Heald as “a dour innings” – left little room for doubt that Pakistan had cheated: he declared that “in my opinion it is not possible to scour the ball like that by legal means”. Sarfraz dropped the case and Lamb subsequently wrote: “I had to admire Don Oslear for giving evidence because I knew what pressure had been put on him by the TCCB.”
Oslear claimed a few weeks later that the TCCB were forcing him to retire as punishment for testifying. The TCCB replied that they had told Oslear several months earlier he would have to retire on his 65th birthday, as all umpires did unless there were no suitable replacements; nevertheless the press cast them as the villains of the story.
It was far from the only occasion on which Oslear annoyed the TCCB. When, in 1993, they proudly rolled out new coloured clothing for players and umpires in domestic matches, Oslear balked at the bright blue coat and baseball cap; at the start of his next game, at Grace Road, he emerged from the pavilion hefting a crate of empty milk bottles and shouting, “Milko!”
In 1996 Oslear was back in the witness box after some England players had made further accusations of cheating that had led to counterclaims of racism and ill-breeding, with the upshot that Lamb and Ian Botham were suing the former Pakistan captain Imran Khan for libel. Imran won the case but was generally judged to have behaved badly when a letter was produced in court which Oslear had sent to the TCCB in 1983 complaining about Imran’s balltampering; he blustered that Oslear was being untruthful in claiming that he had ever sent such a letter and that it must have been a recent fabrication.
The highlight of the case was judged to be the occasion when the stonefaced Oslear reprimanded Imran’s formidable QC George Carman from the witness box for calling him a referee instead of an umpire and referring to the rules rather than the laws of cricket.
In 1996 Oslear co-wrote a book,
Tampering with Cricket, with the combative journalist Jack Bannister, in which he rehashed several instances of suspected cheating. There was some suggestion that Oslear looked slightly foolish in making such a fuss about ball-tampering, a practice which players have had to learn to put up with from the game’s earliest days. But Oslear remained a lonely voice in favour of strict fair play: “While the laws are laid down I have to put them into operation. I came across a number of instances when the law was not observed and I am strong enough to stand up and be counted.”
Donald Osmund Oslear was born on March 3 1929, the son of Jack Oslear, a fish merchant who became mayor of Cleethorpes and helped to found the town’s cricket club, and his wife Violet. While Don was still a boy the family had to be rehoused after their home was destroyed by the Luftwaffe.
After attending Elliston Street School he went to work for his father, filleting fish on the quay at Grimsby Docks; he retained a weather-beaten appearance for the rest of his life. He played football semi-professionally
– he was a goalkeeper for Grimsby Town when Bill Shankly was manager – and ice hockey, as well as club cricket at weekends.
After discovering an aptitude for umpiring at club level he spent his evenings diligently studying the laws of the game, and eventually stood successfully for the first-class list in 1975, being promoted to the Test Panel in 1980.
He umpired five Test matches in total between 1980 and 1984, and eight one-day internationals; altogether he officiated in more than 350 first-class matches between 1975 and 1993. He and John Holder were jointly credited with devising the bowl-out, the now commonplace way of ending tied matches, which had previously been decided on the toss of a coin. In 1983 he was praised for the alacrity with which he dealt with a streaker at a World Cup match between England and Pakistan at Old Trafford, holding the offender in a headlock until officials could reach him.
He was chairman of the First Class Umpires Association from 1990 to 1993 and was a key figure in devising the 41 new laws that were introduced in October 2000; he also published a valuable Wisden guide, The Laws of Cricket: The 2000 Code and Its Interpretation.
Don Oslear is survived by the daughter of his marriage to Doreen Mulhall, which was dissolved, and by his second wife Maureen (née Roberts).
Don Oslear, born March 3 1929, died May 10 2018