Cricket Tales (4) Trigger happy umpire

After a few seasons umpiring I agreed to become the umpires' fixtures secretary. Basically I had to allocate umpires to matches. Easy I thought. Wrong. Some umpires demanded they had the same partner for every match. Some wouldn't travel more than a few miles. Others believed they had a right to umpire only first division matches. Clubs sent in comments about umpires to the Management Committee which wanted the best umpires to stand at the most important matches.

I decided I had to forgo umpiring and instead spent my Saturdays travelling round grounds to look at umpires, particularly those who had come in for caustic criticism! I was accused in no time at all of spying on umpires. However, using my diplomacy skills sic, most problems were smoothed over and in any event I had the Management Committee backing me to the hilt.

Umpires got to know club secretaries well. Not only did this fine body of people hand you your match fee, they also had to deal with any problems you might bring to their attention: boundary not marked out, crease required painting, pitch not prepared to the required standard and so forth.

I visited usually three grounds each Saturday to cast an eye over the umpires. I visited one ground, stayed for about ten overs, then moved to the next ground where I would normally expect to see up to ten overs before/after tea and then on to a third ground for a few overs.

On one afternoon I arrived at the second ground and was surprised that so few runs had been scored and overs played until on closer inspection of the scoreboard I noted that the first team to bat was all out and the second team was batting, yet it was no-where near the usual tea-time.

One club secretary came up to me in a highly animated state. Apparently one of the umpires had given a lot of lbw decisions in favour of the bowlers. Indeed whilst I watched, a ball clearly going down the leg side hit the batsman on the pads and the lbw appeal was upheld.

The match ended at tea-time and the umpire in question made a quick getaway before either I or the club secretaries could interrogate him.

The other umpire was as bemused by the events of the afternoon as the club secretaries. Then the light dawned. The offending umpire enjoyed horse-racing and he had booked to go on a coach trip to an evening meeting at Pontefract racecourse. He needed an early finish if he was to catch the bus and keep his match fee!