Word of the week: The indispensability of the cricket umpire

Umpire (noun), a sporting official, especially in cricket and association football, who adjudicates the game.

The umpire ruled him out, even though the evidence for him having snicked the ball was scanty.

The word “umpire” has a hoary pedigree. In Middle English, the earliest form of this word is as “noumper” around 1350, (meaning not a peer, i.e. not a member of one of the teams, and therefore impartial) though it changed because of a common error, as the expression “a noumper” (with “a” being the indefinite article) led to a typical confusion also seen elsewhere, with the leading “n” becoming attached to the article, changing “a noumper” to “an oumper” and eventually “an umpire”. (This kind of linguistic shift, known as “false splitting”, gave us the word “orange”, because of the same mistake in speaking of “a norange” (the word “naranj” was the term for the fruit in Arabic, and it initially came to English as “a norange”, only to become “an orange” because of this false splitting).

The word “umpire” was applied to the officials of many sports, including football (where it has been superseded by “referee”) and baseball (which still uses it).In cricket, an umpire is a person who has the authority to make decisions about events on the cricket field, according to the Laws of Cricket first published in 1774. Besides keeping a record of the number of deliveries bowled and announcing the completion of an over, the umpire makes vital decisions about the legality of thedeliveries bowled, appeals for wickets and the general conduct of the game in a legal manner. The umpire is meant to function as a trained professional, knowledgeable in the laws of the game, fully aware of the laws, the relevant match conditions and understanding of the pressures under which the players are playing. Heis required (and expected) to be totally fair and unbiased in the execution of his duties and the making of split-second decisions. The slightest error or misjudgement can transform the course of a match and determine its eventual outcome. As AG (Allan) Steel wrote in his chapter on umpiring in the book Cricket, written in conjunction with RH (Robert) Lyttelton, in 1888:

If anyone were to ask us the question “What class of useful men receive most abuse and least thanks for their services?” we should, without hesitation, reply, “Cricket umpires.” The duties of an umpire are most laborious and irksome; they require for their proper performance the exercise of numerous qualifications, and yet it is always the lot of every man who dons the white coat, the present dress of an umpire, to receive, certainly no thanks, and, too frequently, something which is not altogether unlike abuse.”

A Latin poem by William Goldwin from March 1706 describes two umpires “leaning on their bats” –apparently in those days the batsmen were required to touch the umpire’s bat with theirs to register a run. Over time, of course, this began to be considered somewhat unnecessary, and the umpires’ bats were done away with – no doubt saving the umpires a few accidental whacks on their shins by running batsmen.

In the earliest days there were no independent umpires – each side supplied an umpire to ensure anunbiased game was conducted. (This practice persists in much amateur cricket, such as the games I played on weekends as a UN official in Geneva and Singapore.) Subsequently the practice became thatthe host association (and in Test matches, the host country) supplied the umpires. This resulted in so many outraged cries about biased umpiring that the very viability of international cricket was threatened.

The umpiring bias was real, especially in Pakistan, whose umpires were known to seek instructions from the country’s Test captain before a match. During the 1956 MCC tour of Pakistan, several English cricketers brought a particularly egregious Pakistani umpire, Idris Baig, to their room, offered him a drink,and when he asked for water, emptied a couple of buckets of it over him. Baig did not take kindly to this humiliation and the matter snowballed into an international incident, though many a foreign cricketer had probably wished a similar fate upon other Pakistani umpires. (A notable example was Shakoor Rana, with whom the touring English captain, Mike Gatting, had a notorious finger-wagging standoff in 1987.)

By 1986-87 Pakistan‘s series against the West Indies was played under neutral umpires – as it happens, Indian umpires invited by the Pakistan Cricket Board. Its President Nur Khan and skipper Imran had become understandably tired of their team’s successes being discredited by the performance of the Pakistani umpires. Their decision to remove allegations of umpiring bias from the equation not only made the cricket tension-free (except for the more enjoyable sporting tensions associated with the run of play), it started a worldwide trend.

Today all Tests are umpired by officials from other countries, ODIs feature one host umpire and one neutral, and T20Is two host country umpires. But one could argue that the introduction of technology has reduced the prospects of bias, since umpiring howlers would be visible on television for the world to see, and the offending umpire’s career would become rapidly unviable.

From the traditional two umpires on the field, one standing at the end where the bowler delivers the ball, and one at 90 degrees from the facing batsman (usually, but not always, at square leg), the modern game now usesfour umpires: two on-field umpires, a third umpire who watches video replays and adjudicates decisions referred by the on-field umpires, and a fourth umpire who looks after the match balls, takes out the drinks for the umpires and fills in in emergencies.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has three panels of umpires, an Elite Panel, an International Panel and a Development Panel. Most Test matches are controlled by members of the Elite Panel, with local members of the International Panel providing support in the third or fourth umpire roles. The umpires’ old omnipotence has been further undermined in international matches by the creation of a new position of match referee, who enforces the ICC’s Cricket Code of Conduct, imposes fines on offending players reported by the umpires, and is tasked with ensuring the game is played in a reputable manner.

Still, the indispensability of the umpire is best summed up in this story of a conversation among three umpires about their craft.

“There’s wickets and notouts,” says the first, “and I call them as they are.”

“There’s wickets and notouts,” says the second, “and I call them as I see them.”

The third umpire settles the argument.

“There’s wickets and notouts,” he says, “but they ain’t nothing till I call them.”

HT