I hear you have been offered a new two-year contract by the ICC so what are your current retirement plans because you announced last year you’re looking to quit the ICC after the 2007 World Cup?
I’m still not sure what will happen. My plan was to finish international umpiring after the World Cup and if I was going to commit to another two years I would really want to be satisfied with myself that I’m really going to keep enjoying it and I’m not so sure that after another 12 months that I’ll have the passion to keep enjoying it.
Is the passion fading then?
It’s not fading, it’s still there and I’m very mindful of the fact that every ball of every match you do is shown around the world so your performance level has to be as high as possible. I take great pride in what I do but I’m mindful of deteriorating. When you get into your mid-to-late fifties I just don’t think you can possibly be as good as you were in your late forties. The background knowledge and the experience that you gain is always there and that can sometimes carry you through but I never want to be a fly by the seat of my pants umpire.
How do you critique your performance? Do you get down on yourself when you make a wrong decision?
I don’t get down on myself but what I do hate, I suppose, is that when something goes wrong I know I could have done it better. That’s what concerns me, that two or three years down the track I won’t be able to do things as well as I am now. It’s a continuing self-analysis of performances. If I went through a bad slump in the next three to six months and something was going horribly wrong with my umpiring I wouldn’t want to continue because you would make a fool of yourself. As far as I’m concerned (if that did happen) it would only be a confidence thing. I’d maybe find it difficult to get confidence back up to a higher level if things were going wrong all the time.
How many wrong decisions are acceptable for an umpire to make?
I try to average it over a year when we will do ten to 12 matches and I wouldn’t like to be making more than one or two incorrect decisions in a Test match. When I say incorrect, they might turn out to be bad decisions on video review, but sometimes they are the only decisions you could make at the time even though I still don’t like that either. Some things are beyond your control that you have to let go, like a very faint nick on to pad for an lbw or a bat-pad catch where the fielder is within a couple of yards from the batsman and can hear the nick but I don’t. That’s not because I can’t hear, it’s because the state of the game sometimes means that you just miss it. It’s like missing a bowler’s no-ball and you think, ‘why didn’t I call that?’ Whether it’s a concentration lapse or whether your auto-pilot is not on, I don’t know. If there started being more than one or two (mistakes) in a match I’d start to be concerned, especially if it was the same type of decision. Any umpire who broods over a bad decision is not going to be at his best for the next one.
Are you concerned at the level of umpire intimidation in cricket now?
Players can appeal as much as they like and I never use that term ‘they’re trying to intimidate me’. The way I see it, they’re trying to get a decision to go their way. It might look like they’re continually trying to put pressure on but I don’t see it like that. Every appeal comes and goes and if it’s a ‘no’ that then doesn’t come into my thought process for the next appeal down the track.
What is your opinion on player behaviour, generally?
I think it’s pretty good. Probably ten years ago teams would make very frivolous appeals for quite a lot of things because that’s the way things were – they could get away with it – but now if a bowler makes an appeal for something that’s patently not out they often apologise on the way back, and I think they do that because they understand that there are a lot of professional umpires out there and they’re not going to get an outrageous decision go their way.
Someone like Shane Warne seems to favour ongoing discussion with umpires about decisions. Some would argue that is all part of a discreet ‘leaning on the umpire’ process. Where do you stand on banter with bowlers?
If they want to discuss a decision that didn’t go their way I would just say that it ‘didn’t have much going for it’ and they usually accept it. You don’t want to make them feel like you’re above answering their questions and once they know you are willing to communicate with them and also that you’re unwilling to get into long discussions they will hopefully leave you alone then to make future decisions. I respect everybody as professional cricketers because they have to work extremely hard to get where they are; any international cricketer doesn’t get an easy ride into a team. Bowlers’, who we talk to the most, have a particularly hard job.
Do you dislike some bowlers and does it affect your decision making?
There are some players that you probably don’t care for but that doesn’t affect any decision making as you have to keep your personal feelings away from the professional side of the game. Any umpire who has different feelings is going to be found out as everything is on show out there.
I know you are aware that coaches analyse umpires to see which ones are soft or are susceptible to accede to certain decisions. What do you think about this practice?
I won’t say I know any but I have go no doubts that there are coaches who advise players how to go about dealing with certain umpires and who do homework on umpires. I don’t think a coach would be doing his job if he wasn’t aware of an umpire’s propensity to give certain decisions whether it’s lbw, bat-pad or whatever. They do their research on the umpires quite well. Coaches log everything that happens out there and they do it to help their players
Obviously your history with Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan is well chronicled. What is the state of your current relationship?
I’ve umpired him in Test matches in the Caribbean, New Zealand, one-day matches in England, ICC tournaments – he gets on with his bowling and I get on with my umpiring. Obviously we’re not what you would call friends in any way but he’s pleasant; he greets me when he comes on to bowl and I try my best to do my job.
Would you no-ball him again (for throwing) as you did in 1995-96?
There’s a totally different system in place now in 2006 than what there was in 1995. You would like to think that progress in any industry would be enough to avoid problems before they occur. To everyone’s detriment there probably were not enough measures in place in 1995 to solve the issue.
Do you have any regrets about what happened back then?
I did what I believed was right in my mind; other people might have different views but I’m not going to dwell on what happened 11 years ago. There are more important things to think about.
Going back even further, you had a tough baptism in the early part of your career and I believe some decisions you made in a Test between Australia and South Arca at Adelaide created a permanent hatred towards you from South Africans? What really went on?
I was only a young umpire without much experience and I walked into a bit of lion’s den in that Test match. It wasn’t a good few days, that’s for sure. It was a tough Test match to umpire as they were really at each other; Australia had lost the Test in Sydney, unexpectedly from their point of view, and I went to Adelaide as both teams came out with all guns blazing. There was a lot of feeling in the match and a lot being said and maybe half a dozen of my decisions weren’t up to standard. The South Africans will say it was more than that. It was a lack of experience and I allowed myself to be distracted instead of focusing on what’s important. You can’t dwell on things and that game taught me a lot.
So the South Africans never forgot that match?
Two years later I went to umpire a match in South Africa and it was hard clawing back (respect), they obviously didn’t think much of me as an umpire. There was nothing I could do except go out there and umpire. Over a period of two or three years I think I proved it to them that I wasn’t as bad as they thought. You still always get a few lunatics in the South African press who love to hate me but so what? Big deal.
Does the security aspect concern you given the responsibility of your job?
Yes that was another reason why I thought I should retire after the World Cup. If you want to be an international umpire you can’t pick and choose where you go and you’ve got to go to places where you are out of your comfort zone and you don’t feel like you do when you are walking down to your local pub. I’ll be honest; there are times when I don’t like being put in a situation where you are arriving at grounds when there are a lot of people around. There’s a huge amount of money bet on cricket these days, nobody doubts that, and you wonder sometimes whether one of your decisions cost someone a lot of money. I’m certainly a lot more aware of my surroundings a lot more than I was a few years ago.
I remember in the Calcutta Test last year, when Pakistan were in India, and plastic bottles were thrown at you and Steve Bucknor after he gave Sachin Tendulkar out incorrectly.
That’s right and that was the only incorrect decision in the match out of about 150 appeals. You don’t like that sort of thing when people are that passionate about the game - sure they like to see their heroes perform well – but if something goes wrong it’s ‘blame the umpire’. It wasn’t just the reaction at the ground at the time that concerns me; it’s the possibility of someone who has money involved in it. I don’t want to be walking around with security guards with me every day while I’m away; you want to have some sort of relaxation when you’re not on the field.
How are you enjoying living in England (with your English wife Amanda)?
I’ve been living in Lincoln now for two and a half years and I love it. I love the icy conditions just before Christmas and having to scrape ice off the car window; I like the change of seasons. I lived in Sydney for about 30 years and although it gets cool in winter there you wouldn’t call it a big change. But in England I really like the three different changes in season; sometimes all in one day! I particularly enjoy the summer because it allows me to go to evening race meetings in the northern part of the country and going out for dinner with my wife, finding a nice pub on a Sunday afternoon to sit down and read the racing results.
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