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The Cricket Interview/ John Reid

'The umpiring in the Titan Cup was bad. We had as many as 20 new umpires, and that's pathetic'

When you have a panel of ICC umpires, why appoint local ones even if he is part of the ICC panel? Isn't there the risk that a home umpire's decisions might at times be seen as biased?

There have been requests from players to have international umpires at both ends, neither of them drawn from the host nation.

Do you support that?

Well, yes and no. There are two sides to that question. On the one side, you have to remember that the local umpire has to gain international experience -- you can't send him overseas for his maiden Test. But on the other hand, the players need the best -- though they don't always get it.
S Venkataraghavan, David Shepherd and Steve Bucknor are, in my opinion, the three top umpires in the world today. But they are pretty busy. When there are so many Test matches happening the world over, it is not possible to send all of them to one particular place. There are 20 umpires on the ICC panel, and they are all being used.
I guess the bottom line is that while I think the players have a point when they expect and want independent umpires all the time, I think it is not possible at all times.

You were match referee for the Titan Cup one-day tournament in India last year, involving India, Australia and South Africa. There, only home umpires were utilised. What did you think of the standards of umpiring in that tournament?

Frankly, the Titan Cup was bad as far as umpiring was concerned. We had as many as 20 new umpires, and that's pathetic, to say the least. You've got experienced umpires in India -- but they didn't give us Venkat, or V K Ramaswami, until the final. Granted, you have to blood other umpires -- but you certainly don't field 20 new umpires in one tournament, at best you might intermingle 10 fresh umpires with the experienced ones, so that the newcomers gain in confidence and experience from standing with experienced colleagues.
But in the Titan Cup, I had umpires at both ends, both doing their first game. This meant that each morning, I had to have a talk with the umpires, telling them the basics, stuff that the experienced ones know. I had to tell them about things I wanted to see and things I didn't want to see out there. And with the new umpires, I even had to brief them on playing conditions, and so on. They didn't have experience, and it showed in the results, unfortunately. A lot of mistakes were made by them, the players were frustrated. To the credit of the players, they handled this needless pressure pretty well.

Did the Australian and South African players come to you with complaints?

No, they didn't. But I did write a report to the BCCI at the end of the tournament, in which I mentioned what I felt about those umpires, and also that in my view, 20 new umpires was too much to blood at one time.

Let's take a hypothetical case -- how would you have reacted if you were match referee when Mike Gatting had his famous showdown with Pakistani umpire Shakoor Rana?

I don't know, really. I guess he should be suspended for three games.

Do you mean the player, or the umpire?

Hey, I have no control over the umpires, I am sorry to say. Disciplinary measures against them are the prerogative of the local boards, and the match referee has no say in it. But I can handle the players. What happened in Pakistan between Gatting and Rana in the 1987 Test was bad, very bad. I've seen it many times on television. If there was a match referee then, Gatting wouldn't be playing for quite some time.

How do you deal with erring players?

I hold a hearing after the match. I've the captain, the manager, the player, the umpires and the chief executive of the local board there, and I give the concerned player a fair hearing. We use television replays, videotapes, to review the incident, I tell him what code of conduct he has violated, and then give him a chance to explain his side of things.

I am the sole judge, and thus far, no player or manager has challenged a decision I made. I make my judgements with due respect to the sense of natural justice. They have their say -- and they can say whatever they like at the hearing, it won't get out of that room. And then I judge, and that is the end of it. The offender has to accept my decision, and that is all there is to it.