By the Byes
No Change on Reserve List
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) Reserve Panel
of Umpires has no additions for the 2016 season. Despite two
members, Mike Burns and Billy Taylor, being promoted to the
First Class List, the Reserve List will not promote
replacements for the current season. Ben Debenham and
Paul Pollard are the longest-serving umpires on the list,
both entering their fifth year, while Ian Blackwell, Tom
Lungley, Russell Warren and Chris Watts all joined the panel
prior to the start of the 2015 season. Debenham and Watts
have both been promoted to the list with no experience of
playing professional cricket; Debenham having played for
Essex Second XI and Watts plying his trade in league cricket
in Norfolk.
Afghan Official to Stand in First Class Cricket
In our summer 2015 magazine, we ran a story on how the
Asian Cricket Council (ACC) had pledged to help train match
officials in war-torn Afghanistan in a bid to improve the
cricketing infrastructure in the country to help it compete
with other top cricket nations. This initiative was supported
and supervised by Mahboob Shah, a former Pakistani
international umpire who, in 2015, said he saw ‘great
potential in Afghanistan both for players and for officials’.
Ahmed Shah Pakteen became the first Afghan umpire to
stand in a First Class match when he took to the field in a
four-day inter-continental match between Namibia and
Afghanistan in April. Hopefully Pakteen’s rise to
prominence will inspire more Afghan umpires to come
through the system.
Touring Helmet
The first umpire to wear a protective helmet on a cricket
field, Karl Wentzel, has been in India to umpire matches
between a Sydney touring side and suburban Mumbai teams.
As the first umpire to take the precautionary step of wearing
a helmet on field, Wentzel attracted interest from the local
Indian press. In between showing the injuries sustained in the
incident that prompted him to wear a helmet, Wentzel
described why he made the choice to officiate in a helmet.
‘It was a freak accident. I moved to the left but the bowler
put his hand out and the ball deflected, hitting my mouth at
full speed, leaving me with five less teeth. There are umpires
who, like me, have learnt a lesson and started wearing a
helmet after the incident. There are others who have started
using helmets as a precautionary measure. In a limited over
games, the batsmen hit so hard and the umpires get hardly
any time to move.’
Wentzel also believes that more should be done to protect
umpires. ‘The International Cricket Council should make the
use of protective helmets mandatory.’
ECB ACO is taking a watching brief as this debate begins to
gather pace in professional cricket.
Umpire in Award Recognition
Umpires often feel, quite justifiably, that
their efforts throughout the season go
unappreciated. However, Sam Nogajski,
the youngest member of Cricket
Australia’s (CA) National Umpires
Panel, can no longer make this claim
after he was chosen ahead of First
Class players Jackson Bird and Ben
Dunk to claim the Cricket Tasmania
Chairman’s Award. Nogajski was
recognised for his selection and
subsequent performance in
Cricket Australia’s domestic
T20 final.
Nogajski was not present
to accept his award as he
was in South Africa as part
of CA’s umpire exchange
programme. He is clearly a
man in demand and an
umpire to keep our eye on
in the future.
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