NEUTRAL umpires. The very term implies that were two men from a host country to stand for a series against a visiting team, they would be partial to the team from their own country. No matter, the term has gained currency and now one always has one home umpire and one from some other country; these days it always comes down to who is available as there seems to be cricket going on in at least three corners of the world right round the year.
But does it really make that much of a difference? George Sharp, the neutral umpire for the first India-Australia test, appears to have given more dubious decisions in favour of the home team than his colleague, former Indian off-spinner S. Ventakataraghavan. Venkat apparently made one mistake, par for the course as far as an umpire concerned. Sharp, it would appears, was somewhat the opposite of his name.
Sharp does not have the best of records in international cricket; he made some goof-ups in the 1996 Champions Trophy in Sharjah, one of them being in the final, a leg-before decision against Stephen Fleming, when the current New Zealand skipper leapt up to keep a rising ball from Waqar Younis down and was hit on the pad. Fleming, for those who do not know, is well over six feet tall.
What would have been the situation had a competent, respected Indian umpire been standing in the India-Australia Test instead of Sharp? An Indian umpire would have been more comfortable in the Madras clime (there have been suggestions that bringing Sharp straight from the UK cold and dumping him in the cauldron that Madras can be during March was not exactly the best way to improve his concentration). Why bring a man all the way from the UK and then have all this controversy? In short, does the neutral umpire really solve the problem that all teams have been griping about -- bad decisions?
Every umpire has his bad moments; Venkat gave Glenn McGrath a wicket off a no-ball in South Africa in 1997. Steve Bucknor did not call Franklyn Rose for over-stepping in Barbados last year and Navjot Singh Sidhu was caught off the same ball. Seven ball overs have been seen fairly frequently in recent times.
On January 18 this year, umpire K.T.Francis of Sri Lanka admitted to Zimbabwean bowler Andy Whittall on the final day of the second Sri Lanka-Zimbabwe Test that he had made a mistake earlier in the day by not giving Arjuna Ranatunga out off Guy Whittall's bowling, caught off the glove whilst sweeping. Ranatunga went on to assist Aravinda De Silva in a match-winning partnership.
I remember well my encounters with V.K. Ramasamy, one of the best umpires India has produced. Ramasamy, it may be remembered, was one of the first neutral umpires; he stood in the 1986 Pakistan-West Indies series in Pakistan, something that came about because Imran Khan was always griping about being done in by umpires. The experiment was thus carried out first in Khan's own country.
When Ramasamy returned, he dropped in at the office one day and my colleagues and I were extremely curious to know about his experience as a neutral umpire. Now Ramasamy is a modest self-effacing man; he never used to say much but his gestures were extremely eloquent. He had found the experience no different; it was business as usual for him. But he did mention one thing -- that when you are known to be a competent umpire, the players come to respect you and forgive the occasional mistake. And he made one more point -- the very fact that one is called an umpire means that one is from a neutral profession; can a man betray his own profession?
Would the concept of a so-called neutral umpire make a difference if the man was an incompetent? Remember, Sharjah has never had anything other than a neutral umpire right from the start but there has been quite some stink from many tournaments in that part of the world. No, I don't think it really matters where the man comes from; a competent umpire who is out there to do his job is all that counts. If that is the case, a good deal of the "being done in" would exist only in the imagination of the players.