PAST & PRESENT
Un-neutral umpires
RAMACHANDRA GUHA
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"I have long believed that umpires of all countries were biased in favour of their own players."
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Photo: AFP
Controversial decisions: Austalian umpire Darrell Hair during the England-Pakistan Oval Test match.
UNTIL very recently, home country umpires officiated at Test matches. This led, naturally, to periodic accusations of bias against them. Few touring teams were above blaming partisan umpiring for their defeats. Typically, the cricketers who moaned loudest and longest were the English. They claimed that sub-continental umpires, and the Pakistanis in particular, were incompetent at best and cheats at worst. We South Asians, for our part, answered by saying that the myth of English fair play was just that, a myth. For, umpires in the Home Country could be just as biased. Recall the Oval Test of 1979, when an Indian victory was thwarted only by umpires who were crooked or foolish, and possibly both.
Provocative gesture
Many readers will recall the storm that broke when, on his side's tour of Pakistan in 1987, the England captain Mike Gatting wagged a finger at the umpire, Shakoor Rana, and accused him of cheating. Gatting's gesture was bitterly resented by the Pakistani cricketers, and by their public. In fact, by the standards of English cricketers in Pakistan, his reaction was mild in the extreme.
Consider this incident, which occurred even before I was born. In the early 1950s, an England "A" team lost an unofficial Test match in Peshawar. They charged that the reason for their defeat was not the quality of the Pakistan players but the trigger-happy local umpire, Idris Beg, who had given four England batsmen out l.b.w. in their second innings. Anyway, after the match was over, six England players went to the hotel where Idris Beg was staying, blindfolded him and took him to their own hotel, where they beat him up and broke his arm.
Unanimous condemnation
The next day, the leader of this English gang, Donald Carr, apologised, saying it "was all part of a joke whilst they were under the influence of liquor." But the local press was in no mood to accept the apology. The Karachi Times commented that the incident was a "peculiar sign of the imperialist power of Britain that her sportsmen show indignity, irritability and resort to indecorous behaviour in the event of defeat". Lahore's Civil and Military Gazette remarked that the episode showed that Europeans still believed that they had a "civilising mission" in the East. However, "the day is long set when such an attitude can produce the desired results. We heard a lot and a good deal too long of European culture and civilisation. It is thus, perhaps, time our friends and brothers in the West realised that when we taught men how to behave, Europe was just not anywhere on the map of the civilised world".
Meanwhile, back in London, The Times wrote that the "hooliganism — no lighter word fits — of some of the members of the MCC team" had blotted Britain's reputation for sportsmanship. However, when the cricketers returned home, the old England player George Duckworth — who had travelled with them in an unofficial capacity — offered this rationale, or explanation, or excuse, for their behaviour: "You have to remember that these boys had nothing to do in their spare time. A dance with three girls available for 12 partners was a luxury, they had to play in outlandish spots, sleep in strange places, and endure the Karachi `tummy' because of the change of diet".
My hypothesis
I have long believed that in the decades before neutral umpires became the norm, umpires of all countries were biased in favour of their own players. And I have long hoped for a decisive statistical confirmation of this belief, which would involve a systematic study of Test scorecards over the years. The four decisions where an umpire has most leeway are leg-before-wicket, caught by the wicket keeper, stumped and run out. What we need is a tabulation, for all countries, of the number of home as well as visiting cricketers given out in these four ways, in all Tests played in that country when home umpires officiated. These figures will then have to be normalised, expressed not as absolutes but as a percentage of all dismissals. My hypothesis is that for every country, the percentage of home batsmen sent back by umpires will be less than the percentage of visiting batsmen. However, the extent of bias will vary. Which country's umpires have been most notorious in this regard? Will a cricket-lover with more skill and stamina than myself analyse the Test scorecards, and provide us the answer?
Not controversial anymore
Now, with neutral umpires, such controversies have been laid to rest. No longer can defeat be attributed to local bias, or complaints charged to colonialist hypocrisy — Darrel Hair's recent treatment of the Pakistanis notwithstanding. Still, for the record, it would be nice to have an authoritative study of cricket umpiring down the ages. Perhaps a statistically-minded reader will take up the assignment proposed here. And perhaps a literary-minded reader will do me a second favour, and locate the charming poem written by Alan Ross about the treatment of Idris Beg. It is a poem I once read, and thought I possessed, but could not find in time to include in this column.
ramguha@vsnl.com
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