Another cricket tale

A local cricket league I umpired for was a hot-bed of intrigues, hostilities, vendettas and the black art of mind games - and that was off the field!

Some clubs had a mutual loathing going back decades and the paramount duty of their players was to win at all costs. The concept of something not being 'cricket' was alien.

The gamesmanship, indeed outright cheating, engaged in by clubs and players could make life very difficult for umpires. I was appointed to stand at a match between two clubs who were very hostile towards each other. The reason for this had something to do with an affair between the wife of the wicket-keeper of one club and the secretary of the other club. Matches had been known to end prematurely in fights. Bowling beamers, appealing for catches when the ball had gone to ground and tampering with the ball was to be expected.

On arrival my heart sank, my fellow umpire had failed to turn up. I would have to stand at both ends and the square leg umpire would have to be a person agreed by the two captains. Par for the course, the captains would not agree. My response was to ask each captain to nominate one person and I would toss a coin to determine who would undertake the square leg duty. The 'winner' was the secretary of the home club.

The captains tossed and the home side decided to field. After a few uneventful overs the home side brought on their spin bowler and the wicket-keeper stood up to the stumps. The bowler was spinning the ball prodigously and has the batsmen groping. However accuracy was not a strong point, so we had quite a few wides.
Then the bowler sent down a ball, it spun, went behind the batsman and the next thing that happened was the bails fell. Unfortunately I did not see the ball hit the wicket. I glanced to the square leg umpire who had his finger up. I must admit I had thought the ball had spun so much it would have gone between the batsman and the wicket and popped out on the leg side.

The same events happened for the next four wickets. The visiting team vented its fury. What was happening was that as the ball passed the stumps the wicket keeper flicked off the bails with his pads. This I could not see, but the stand in umpire at square leg could.

Coming off the field at the end of the visiting team's innings I was accosted. The visitors accepted that I had had to rely on the square leg umpire for the decisions. Tea was tense.

When the visitors fielded retribution was quick and effective. Five times the ball hit the pads of home team batsmen. Five times my finger was raised. Were they lbw? Of course, the umpire said so.