As anyone will tell you who has played the game with any passion, batsmen don't walk and fielders appeal for everything.
The reason for this isn't that our society has been corrupted by Big Brother or that the old values of duty and self-sacrifice that got us into so many lovely wars have been replaced by navel-gazing blogging. It is because umpires, all umpires, are crap.
How can anyone really hear a faint edge? How can anyone really understand the LBW law, which of course is less a law and more a matter of opinion. Whenever something remotely doubtful happens on the cricket field, there is an even chance the umpire will get it wrong. If you have been batting and swung fruitlessly at a ball going down the leg side only for the entire slips cordon to go into apoplexy and the umpire to give you out caught behind, you know that the next time you really do nick that leg side temptress, you sure as hell aren't going to walk. And if, fingers crossed, the hapless umpire believes your nonchalant posturing and gives you not out, it isn't some terrible contravention of the spirit of the game, it is just payback. Think of it as restoring the cosmic balance.
The problem with professional independent umpires is that they raise unfair expectations. When they get decisions wrong there is uproar and it is seen as a conspiracy, racism or bad sportsmanship from the players.
For a game in which a large number of wrong decisions are inevitable, this is a fraught recipe. The answer is obvious. It is there for all to see every Saturday afternoon in grade cricket at the local park. Let players from the batting side be the umpires.
Beyond the sheer relish of seeing Andrew Symonds no-ball an irate Harbhajan Singh, this idea has more merit than you might think. It would ensure that batsmen really do get the benefit of the doubt. And it would clear up all the uncertainty over questionable incidents, putting the onus on the fielding team to get a batsman out in the clearest possible manner.
In lower grade cricket it works perfectly. The one rule for umpires in such park cricket is that you don't give LBWs unless the guy has been rapped on the pads three times in an over. Think of it as three strikes and you're out. Everyone know this. It doesn't stop the bowlers appealing, even though they know you aren't going to give your mate out. But they will keep plugging away, knowing that if your mate doesn't start hitting the ball soon you will eventually crack under the weight of evidence.
I had a player in my team once who didn't quite understand the subtlety of this. He had a somewhat odd technique that gave him the ability to miss almost every ball, with the inevitable consequence that he would more often than not be the only LBW on the score sheet. Incensed by the injustice, one day in the dressing room he distributed printed explanations of the LBW law, suggesting that none of us understood it. Of course we didn't understand it, we didn't need to. For us it was just a percentage game.
And herein lies the beauty of using biased umpires as the solution to cricket's latest crisis: the bias can only go so far.
A year or so ago I was playing in a friendly between two publishing companies. I was just getting my eye in batting when I chased an absurdly wide ball down the leg side and got a faint but discernible nick, which the keeper duly snapped up. "Howzat!" went the cry.
Appalled at getting out in such a ridiculous manner, I stood my ground, shaking my head in disbelief, for all the world suggesting that the fielding team were nasty con artists out to get me. I was shocked when my teammate officiating at the other end inquired of me whether I had hit the ball. It was one thing to posture and act like I'd missed it, but it was another thing entirely to lie out loud. So for the first and only time in my life, I walked.
"Good on you, mate," said the keeper as I trudged off. "It's a friendly after all." He was right. And he also knew that if it had been a competitive game, I'd have been entirely within my rights to stand my ground, just as he'd have been entitled to call my mother all sorts of things for the rest of the day.
A personal note:I was personally quite incensed by how the 2nd test match turned out. It was a brilliant game marred by horrific umpiring and sportsmanship. Nevertheless, it is, after all just a game. No need to burn effigies over it.
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