Cricket World Cup: A twinkle in the human eye

CRICKETERS WHO endlessly graze on green fields under a hot sun are gently chided as flannelled fools for their trouble, but the umpires who dare to interrupt their labours of love are less well thought of.

Hard-markers consider them a union of blind men; on Bradman's 1948 tour the late Alec Skelding rejected a sustained appeal, causing some restlessness in the Australian ranks. Almost immediately, a small dog escaped on to the field and was grabbed by an Australian fielder, who carried it to Skelding and announced: "Here Alec, all you need now is a white stick."

Some take a humourless view of umpires: willing participants in a mug's game of arm waving and index-finger pointing and generally inviting abuse - celibate masochists. The judgemental blemishes of umpires over time have inspired the collective nickname "the cheats". Dejected players deliver it with a smile, but also a chilly eye.

The truth is umpires are the best example of that special breed of person who cannot resist the appeal of cricket and all it offers by way of intrigue. For Darrell Hair, the well-regarded Australian umpire, it is something he calls "the tingle".

Serious television watchers would see in Hair much of Andre of 'Allo 'Allo fame - large man, unflappable, even street smart, slightly swarthy, serious countenance masking a sense of humour inclined towards rascally. Hair has "twinkle" to go with the tingle. The job description rather demands it be that way: applicant must maintain two basic standing positions for five hours; permitted to move from foot to foot occasionally; must closely observe approximately 600 incidents daily and adjudicate on 600 developments possibly arising therefrom. Decisions may be subject to electronic monitoring.

Hair sees umpiring as no different from a batsman playing a long innings. "I work a half-hour at a time, like a batsman scores in spans of 10 runs. I concentrate on a ball at a time. When I sense the bowler is close by I glance down at the crease for the no-ball check.

"It's just a downward glance, not too intense because then I'd have no hope of re-focusing on the big picture about to happen 20 yards further on. Then as I glance up I let the ball come into view. I don't start waving my head around searching for the ball or again, I'd risk missing the big picture."

The big picture can mean "the replay" and Hair recounts, good-naturedly, a moment with Shane Warne after Hair turned down one of the great leg- spinner's blowtorch appeals. "Warnie frowned back down the pitch for a while until the replay came up on the scoreboard. Then he walked slowly back past me, all the time watching the replay...then when he reached his mark I heard this almighty exhalation and with it, 'Gee, Darrell, did you see that replay?' "

Paranoia about replays and pressure build-up - "during long spells by Warne and Stuart MacGill in tandem the game is moving at a terrific pace, there is more potential for things to happen" - can be the umpire's greatest enemies. Hair thinks one-day cricket has helped umpires cope better with Test pressures. "We are more on the ball, we move more quickly." Hair has his own regime for dealing with stress. "One, I come down from fierce concentration for the 30 seconds between balls and two, I ensure my breathing doesn't get shallow, the first sign you're doing it tough."

None of that helped him a lot when the much-respected Hair was riding through the whitewater of the Muttiah Muralitharan throwing controversy, headlined as Hair's career low-point, but his background certainly did.

Hair's medium-paced swing and seam would have been more useful in England's Midlands than on the plumb pitches of the New South Wales mid-west but once they pushed him to the edge of glory. The opponents were nine down in the final with more than a few to get when Hair fiddled a skied catch from the last man. It went down and so did Hair's team. Twenty years on he still laughs over the game's levelling qualities.

Bush people also have an unswerving belief in what Australians call the "fair-go". Hair is disturbed by the increasingly popular one-day cricket tactic where leg-side wides are attracting token appeals by the wicketkeeper to try to influence the wide call. "It's against the spirit of cricket and captains should do something about it," Hair says. All he is saying is that in his opinion the action is unfair... and isn't that what he thought in the case of Muralitharan?

Perhaps his "tingle" should be the last word in any judgement of Hair as an umpire: "I can still remember the very first time I felt the slap of a ball against a piece of wood; it was a pick-up match in the schoolyard at Orange but I still get a tingle when I hear that sound."