Perth is not that green a
top as I described earlier it to be… still England find themselves hoplessly
placed ~ trailing 0-2 – now Aussie lead England by 369 runs with 7 wickets and
2 days to go…. Warner made a fast hundred today… adding to the dejection of
visitors..
A basic guide to Umpiring
instructs …….. ‘have six (6) stones or coins (plus one in your other pocket in
case of losses)’ so that you can count the number of balls in each over. Perhaps old time….not any longer…. Now-a-days most
Umpires use counters…….. mechanical contraptions…. Where there are efficient
scoreboards, the umpire does not need to make any other check; he only has to
see that every run is recorded. But most often, an umpire has to make his own
record of runs. For this purpose simple clickers where each click increases the
display by one, is commonly used ~ this man is in news because – he forgot to
carry the pebbles or the counter… perhaps !!
He is famous ~ fans in India know him too well….. Brent
Fraser "Billy" Bowden from New
Zealand. He was a player until he began to suffer from rheumatoid arthritis and
took up umpiring. He is well known for his dramatic signalling style which
includes "crooked finger of doom" out signal. His umpiring debut was
in Mar 1995 in a match between Kiwis and Lankans at Hamilton… In Mar 2000, he
officiated in a Test; in 2002 he was included in the Emirates Panel of
International Umpires; was duly promoted to the Emirates Elite Panel of ICC
Umpires, of which he a member till 2013.
Bowden, from his inclusion
in the Elite Panel of ICC Umpires in 2003, umpired in 75 Tests, 181 one-day
internationals and 19 Twenty20 internationals. He was dropped from the ICC
Elite Panel of Umpires after an annual review of performance in June 2013. It is stated that suffering from rheumatoid
arthritis, it was too painful for Bowden to signal a batsman out in the
conventional fashion, with a straight index finger raised above the head, and
this led to the "crooked finger of doom". He has also put his own
slant on several other signals, including a "crumb-sweeping" wave of
the arm to signal four, and the "double crooked finger six-phase hop"
to signal a six. To his critics, everything is exaggerated, with arms and legs
flailing as if he were a trapeze artist on the high wire. A four is met by a
great arc of the arm sweeping across his body as the back leg slides out, a
balletic act Test Match Special's Henry Blofeld describes as fit for a
"walk on part at the Opera House". A leg-bye in the NatWest Series
was greeted thus: "He taps his leg and shakes it. If it was butter it
would be milk by now". Bowden's compatriot, former Test captain Martin
Crowe, has been less than complimentary, describing the umpire as a "Bozo
the Clown" character instead of one of the stars of the Big Top.
Even as one thought that
the Word has seen him enough, Tony Hill, his fellow countryman made a series of
errors during the Ashes series in England in the winter, and was sidelined from on-ground officiating
this summer ~ opening the doors for Billy again. The other umpires from the series in England
- South Africa's Marais Erasmus, Kumar Dharmasena of Sri Lanka and Pakistan's
Aleem Dar - are all there to
officiate. Billy Bowden was back for the
Perth Test but is expected to move to TV box in Melbourne.
~ and that was
decided much before the present gaffe…. !!!!
Recalled to adjudicate a
Test match for the first time since being dumped from the ICC's elite umpiring
panel midway through this year, Bowden was clearly so gripped by the intensity
of an Ashes contest that he forgot how to count. Twice in the space of six overs, Bowden failed to call
"over" at the correct time - cutting the 39th over bowled by Stuart
Broad to five legal deliveries (six balls were bowled, but one was called a
wide), then making Ben Stokes run in for a seventh delivery in the 45th over.
The Elite Panel of ICC
Umpires is a panel of cricket umpires appointed by the International Cricket
Council to officiate in Test matches and One Day Internationals around the
world. The panel was first established in April 2002 when the ICC decided to
reform the way that international cricket was umpired. The main change was that
both umpires in a Test match and one of the umpires in a One-day international
are now independent of the competing nations, whereas before 2002 just one of
the umpires in a Test was independent and in ODIs both umpires were from the
home nation.
Sadly, there is none from
India in the present elite panel…. While there are some who keep making
mistakes – Bruce Oxenford will readily come to my mind....
Regards – S. Sampathkumar.
15th Dec 2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment