By: Narayanan Komerath
December 07, 2004

It’s a familiar refrain. Day Four of a series-deciding Test match. Several million people watch as the star batsman edges the ball and gets caught. The shout of relief and triumph from the fielders. The umpire smugly disdains the appeal. The dismayed fielding captain, victim of umpiring incompetence the day before, “shows dissent”.  Both umpires “complain” to Big Momma, the ICC’s Match Referee, who promptly fines the captain 1/3 of his match fees.  

World-class competition is supposed to be decided on skill, initiative, wits, will  and all-out human endeavor – not  by random umpiring boo-boos. So what’s wrong with a team captain, seeing the utter dismay of his teammates, expressing what millions of viewers saw – that the umpires are dolts?  

Oh, yes, I know, I know.  Never question an umpire. “Its not cricket”.  It’s a tough job, umpiring in hot weather, the noise of the field, long hours, the hangover, Tandoori Chicken’s Revenge, “pressure” from fielders appealing. We should all bow to the selfless super-heroes in the silly white hats. Yeah!  Poor Babies!  

Lets take the specifics of the latest Test match – the series decider at Kolkotta between India and South Africa. At least 3 crucial decisions were utterly and inexcusably wrong – Saurav Ganguly given out LBW to a ball pitched well outside the leg stump, Jacques Kallis given not out after being caught off a thick inside edge  that we could all see, and Shawn Pollock, given out caught, maybe off the ground, but certainly not off the bat. Several other decisions were plainly shaky and inconsistent. And this was with two umpires who are apparently the best of the lot, compared to such ICC worthies as “The Slow Death”, “Dennis the Menace” and others. Of the above, the error about Pollock was perhaps difficult for the umpire to see from where he stood – it only became evident in slow-motion replay from a different angle. But this only reinforces my point.  

In cases of doubt about catches, stumpings and run-outs, there is a Third Umpire facility available, loaded with technical tools. Refusal to ask for help is laziness, criminal negligence, or worse. This mars the game, far more than any perceived disrespect from a dismayed fielder or an incredulous batsman. The ICC’s guilty petulance clearly stems from intolerance of Ganguly telling it like it is. 

And then take the LBWs, where all the excuses about “split-second decision”, “umpire’s persective”,  “deafening crowd noise” get trotted out in a whine-fest every time we see another glaring match-fixer atrocity. They say that LBW can’t be referred to the Third Umpire because the rule is so complex. It is complex all right – due to all the meddling over the years to suit the scams by the British and Australian fuddy-duddies on the ICC Board. The REAL LBW rule now probably reads something like this:  

“A batsperson shall be given out Leg Before Wicket (LBW) if s(he) is struck on the leg-pads by a ball which would otherwise have hit the stumps, and provided that there has been no contact between the ball and the bat, and that the ball was pitched in line with the stumps, and furthermore that the pad struck is not on an extended front leg, in which case the aforesaid ball cannot be turning after pitching, or said batsperson offers no stroke to a ball pitched outside the off-stump and the batsman is Indian and the umpires don’t like the captain and the ICC hates his guts for being right and telling the truth, but not if the ball is pitched outside the off-stump and the batsman is from one of the Great Nations, and provided that the bowler is not bowling around the wicket and the umpire is not feeling hurt at the number of appeals being made by the fielding side in cases where the fielding side is Indian…”.. (turn to next 3 pages of conditions and clauses).   

The umpire is supposedly smart and alert enough to go through this entire expert system in the millisecond during which the ball traveling 90 mph on a complex trajectory makes contact with the pads and/or bat of a batsperson moving equally fast. Remember, these are guys who can’t see a thick inside edge deflecting the ball by 45 degrees. Or a ball bouncing off the outside of a front leg pad, while the bat is 6 inches away on the inside of the leg. Yeah, sure, that sounds likely.  

Yes, discipline and integrity in sportsmanship are important – and they are clearly missing from the ICC. The ICC’s arrogance and infantile thin-skinned incompetence have stretched the limits of our patience too far.  

We don’t expect  players at the highest levels of the game, in intense national competition, to be as jaded and  brain-dead in lack of emotion as the  booze-sodden fuddy-duddies who sit in arrogant judgement about them in some cozy hotel bar. To make matters worse, the ICC’s  “rules” are enforced with such glaring disparity, that the stink of racism permeates their actions.  Remember Mike Denness accusing Tendulkar of tampering with the ball?  Or banning Nehra, Sehwag, and Chopra, and Ganguly (many times)? Or, how about all those foul-mouthed Pakistanis and Australians, or the plain obnoxious British, world-champions at whining?  

I watched South African bowlers picking at the seam as the ball abraded on the Kolkotta pitch, just as Tendulkar was accused of doing in South Africa. Where were the ICC’s rules?  

But isn’t cricket a “gentleman’s game”? Lets not insult readers’ intelligence - it quit being that the moment the British started playing it. “Lagaan” portrays English cricketing standards much more accurately (except where they accepted the result)  than the emotional hype in “Vitai Lampada”. 

Apparently, per ICC rules, it is perfectly OK for Australian goons to glare at a batsman and question his parentage, but its not OK for an Indian captain to look at an umpire who has just made a horrible error through sleeping on the job. Just not cricket, what-what!!! The guys sitting in judgement include some of the worst offenders in cricket history. Remember the British “Brylcreem Boys” using vaseline pads to shine one side of the ball in India in the 1970s to get magical 30-degree late swings? They were declared innocent by their MCC coaches using the same logic as that used in the Jalianwala Bagh massacre trial. That was long before the Pakistanis “discovered” reverse swing using bottle caps to scratch out one side during the lunch break.  The English and Australians were also the creators of deliberate padding and negative leg-stump and body-line bowling, aided by greentop or concrete-hard pitches which the subcontinentals could not afford to develop in their schools. One can certainly not accuse the ICC of  shocked innocence – there’s hardly a dirty scam that their paragons of sportsmanship haven’t tried themselves when it suited them. But when its these uppity Asians wining matches, the “standards” get trotted out from obscure rules. Remember “Slow Death” railing and ranting against young Parthiv Patel? Or one of the most obnoxious of the Australian brats, whining to the umpires about Patel clapping when he got out?  Or the ban on Rashid Latif for “falsely claiming a catch”? (something the Australians or English never do, what-what?) 

Enough is enough. Its time Indian fans exerted the prerogative of the customer – we account for some 70% of cricket’s revenue today. Its bad enough that we are restrained from exercising our natural instincts – no chair-throwing at Chennai (which makes Test cricket duller than watching the State Assembly in session), no stand-burning at Mumbai, where  the Shiv Sena burns hospitals and libraries, or bottle-throwing at the Marxist-ruled Garden of Eden at Kolkotta, home to the Naxal street-bombers. But we draw the line when it comes to fair play in cricket. Here are my suggestions to the ICC and the “Bored” which “controls” cricket in India. They worked great in my school days when we couldn’t even afford pads, so why not now with all these technical aids?  

1. Each field umpire shall be a member of the batting team, appointed by leave of the fielding captain, and shall not officiate for more than 1 hour at a time.
    

2. Each umpire shall keep six berries in his hand or pocket, to count balls in the over, and shall refrain from eating the same until his umpiring assignment is complete.
    

3. In all appeals, the decision of the umpire shall be final unless the fielding captain or batsman disagrees. In case of disagreement, the decision shall be referred to the third Umpire, and the video used for the same shall be projected for all to see. The Third Umpire’s decision is final unless the fans burn down the stadium. Surely, this will delay the game, but it will ensure fairness and transparency. And my LBW rule will make up for lost time.
    

4. The LBW rule shall be modified to read:

“The batsman shall be given out LBW if the ball is determined to have been on a trajectory which would have hit the stumps, and was deflected by the leg-guards of the batsman before being struck by the bat.” Period. None of this pitched here, moved there, foot was forward, line was around the wicket, etc. etc. Did your leg-pads save your stumps from being hit, before your bat touched the ball? You’re out.  

This no doubt will make Tests much shorter. It will make leg-spinners and off-cutters more dangerous, and batting more exciting as sweeps and reverse drives become common. At our gravel school ground, it used to guarantee results – 20 wickets between 4 and 6:15pm, enough to grab the stumps and pedal home to beat the 6:30 curfew. If we could do it, I don’t see why these international hot-shots can’t. 

In all First-Class matches, LBW adjudication must be assisted using four cameras – one in front and one behind to judge direction, and two to the sides to measure height, pace and trajectory. Perhaps two more at 45 degrees to remove all doubt as in the Pollock case. Each umpire should be given a wireless PDA for instant replay – before deciding Out, Not Out or Refer to Third Umpire. 

For now, I won’t insist on the restoration of the Right to Throw Banana Peel, Plastic Bottles and Chairs. Maybe we’ll give those to our Elected Representatives to use in the hallowed chambers of our Legislative Bodies. Or maybe in ICC Board meetings. I would insist on the right to yell: “Don’t be nervous, yaaar!” to the opposing batsmen – just to encourage them, you know… 

The damage done by umpires is getting ridiculous. Ask John McEnroe or George Steinbrenner. Its enough to make you want to throw a bat – or a tantrum.

Narayanan Komerath