It's One Tough Job

Something crucial happens. For less than a second, a decisive event occurs, and millions of people all around you and all around the world are glued to the action. All of a sudden these millions are looking at you for your opinion on the event. Your opinion can change the situation; change not just the victim’s day or week, but possibly even his whole life. You have a man screaming right into your ears imploring of you to pass your decision in his favour, while his opponent stands, looking at you, for it is your opinion that counts.

This is just a cricket field. And you are “just” the umpire. This is just a test match with a bowler appealing for an LBW decision, supported by at least 5000 others.

Yes, as an umpire you don’t gain much attention, but at this point when the cricketing world stands still to look at you for your verdict, all attention is towards you. Worse, it is a possibility in some countries that there are around one lakh people shouting their pleas at you. Yet, you know, that you have to remove all this from your point of view and come to your decision completely impartially.

Doing this much is tough enough. But this is just after the event occurs. What about the event itself? What goes on in the umpire’s mind when the bowler’s foot lands on the popping crease and when that red little thing leaves the bowler’s hand?

First up, his eyes are fixed steadfast on the popping crease, searching for the landing foot. Ah, there it comes. Once it lands, the umpire has just about 0.05 to 0.1 seconds to decide whether the bowler violated the law or not. He has just about one tenths of a second to make call no ball if necessary. Note: he has one tenths of a second to not just arrive at his decision, but also scream “NO BALL!!!” whenever necessary. His job is nowhere near complete.

Once he has executed the necessary procedure at this stage, his eyes look up, in front of him, searching for the cherry in the air. And they have to move fast. The cherries of some fast bowlers of the world take about 0.3 to 0.4 seconds to get to the other end. The umpire’s eyes have to not only locate the ball, but also focus on it before it even hits the ground. The ball usually hits the ground a little after half its journey to the batsman.

But, there’s no point just looking. He must also have prior knowledge and a perfectly precise judgement of where the three stumps are. For, he has to draw an imaginary line on the pitch all the way down from the striker’s wickets to the pitch of the ball. He has to no exactly where the ball pitched. Whether he ball pitched within the line of the stumps is crucial knowledge in LBWs.

So the journey of the cherry continues. The umpire looks at where the ball pitches, makes a mental note of the issue and looks on. That sentence makes it seem very easy. Permit me to reiterate. The umpire has no time to look at the stumps. He has to acknowledge the exact position of the pitch of the ball with respect to what he thinks is the area which is directly, perpendicularly in line with the wickets.

The ball keeps moving, doesn’t bother whether the umpire’s got it right or not and reaches the batsman. This is where the mind of the umpire is completely focussed. The umpire has to ensure that all the hard work he’s done this far will go to waste if he loses his focus now. The amount of concentration of the umpire at this stage is amazing.

My judgement says that not even the best umpires in the world or the greatest brains in the world can keep this kind of concentration going for longer than 10 seconds. True, the umpire has to keep it for just about 5; but take note: not even the best brains in the world can keep it going for ten seconds.

Coming back to the cherry, there are numerous possibilities as to what happens when it reaches the batsman. On no two occasions will the events be the same. The umpires get new ones each time. But, apart from exceptional cases, the happenings are usually the same prima facie. The umpire now has to keep his ears open as well. If it’s in the direction of the batsman’s body, he has to tune his ear to pick up the number of noises and the kind of noises. The number has to be picked up to see whether the ball just touched pad or also got the bat. And the type to understand whether it hit the bat, glove, pad, helmet, body, or nothing at all.

Remember, the ears only act as backup to the eyes, but let alone the naked eye, even the fastest of cameras, even the ultra-motion cameras are in some cases not capable of reacting or perceiving so as to acknowledge minute deviations in the balls path. If the umpire hears wood, he relaxes his mind to a small extent, recognising that the LBW is now out of the question. Ah, but it isn’t that easy, here’s the catch, he has to hear wood before he hears anything else, for there is the possibility of the ball getting ricocheted off the pad or any other part of the batsman’s person onto the bat.

Now the umpire’s mind starts to process the various possibilities. Let us go into the first one, the ball having either touched just the person or the bat after the person. There comes the question of the LBW – the decision which proves the umpire’s mettle. He has to retrieve from his memory where the ball pitched, whether outside the line of leg stump of not. Then he must observe; whether the ball hits the person of the batsman in line with the stumps or not, and if outside the line of off stump, he must judge whether the batsman offered a stroke or not; which way the ball was moving, whether it would have gone on to hit the stumps if not for the person; and whether the height was too much. These are the basics.

If all the criteria are in favour of the bowler, the umpire must rule the batsman out, if in his opinion the delivery is a legitimate one. To ascertain this, he must retrieve from his memory the bowler’s foot at the popping crease and some other factors.

Now that he has arrived at his LBW verdict, he can relax a little bit, but has to keep his eyes on the proceedings and look whether he is required to increase his level of concentration for the chance of a run out. All the while he must keep a constant eye on the players, their behaviour and so on. In this, he will be helped by his colleague at square leg.

The whole situation changes if the ball is not directed towards the batsman’s person. The umpire’s ear now works harder than his eye to pick any small snick. In coordination with his eyes, if his ears hear a sound, his eyes will search and attempt to find out whether the noise was from bat hitting ball. If not, then he will look into other possibilities. But if so, he has to ensure that if the ball goes to a fielder or the keeper, the catch is completed legally.

This is just a small insight on few things the umpire does, the tougher side. Apart from this, the umpire needs an absolutely fluent knowledge of the laws of the game and has to undertake countless procedures pre match and post match.

The trick for an umpire lies in maintaining this high level of concentration over five days of six playing hours each. This is why it’s good to socialise with players and have a chat about the quality of the food, the beautiful sights to see in the area, sometimes how good a player is, etc. All this of course is between two balls bowled. It is important to note that it is physically and scientifically impossible for an umpire to take stock of the situation when a ball is being bowled as mentioned earlier and consciously arrive at so many decisions in such a short span of time. This is where the years of practice come in. At one stage of his career, the umpire’s mind can do all this subconsciously without the umpire consciously actually taking part in taking the decision. He only has to ensure that he takes in all the data, the mind will automatically process this data and arrive at a verdict. The umpire’s mind will automatically inform him on the verdict.

All the umpire has to do therefore, – if he is experienced – is take the data and wait and listen to what his subconscious mind thinks. Later, after the game, just when the umpire thinks he can relax, there are a large number of people questioning all his decisions out of which few know what they’re talking about. Umpiring is like taking candy from a baby – surprisingly difficult.-BS