An aggrieved umpire writes

The truth about a recent story involving an elite official, from the horse's mouth

As discovered by Samantha Pendergrast

March 19, 2011

This article contains a sensational
 revelation about this man
© DigicelCricket.com/Brooks LaTouche Photography

Dear editor,

I would like to bring to your attention the biased report, riddled with factual errors, that you have written about my supposed demotion in the ICC World Cup.

Your reporters clearly dislike me - are any of them former Test cricketers? - and are too lazy to check their facts. Let me provide them for you.

While your publication claims that by giving me "inconsequential" matches, the ICC has tried to make up for my errors in the earlier games, the truth, as has been reliably conveyed to me by an ICC official, is that they don't "trust the other umpires to officiate in what are the most sensitive games of the tournament".

Sensationalists like you must obviously know of the sort of tension and build-up that surrounds matches between India and Pakistan. This one time a batsman from one of these teams told me it was better for me to give him leg-before than for him to be caught or bowled because that way he could blame me and the selectors wouldn't drop him. Such is the burden on us umpires.

Anyway, getting back to the point, the ICC told me that it needed an umpire of my calibre to stand in similar high-tension games: Ireland and Netherlands, as I'm sure your subs will dub it, is the battle of Europe. And those amateur players are far more fiendish than Shahid Afridi could ever manage to be. Did you know they have jobs outside the game? There are even lawyers among that bunch. And what good is a lawyer who has to appeal?

Speaking of lawyers, William Porterfield could do with one (if he isn't one, that is) after having maligned mefollowing the Gary Wilson incident. His objection, it seems, is that I gave Wilson out off a ball that hit him outside off, after replays suggested he was offering a shot. Here's what happened after the decision had been referred:

Bruce Oxenford: Oh what now, Ash?
Me: Please tell us if that git of a Wilson is out, Oxxy
Bruce: Right, just let me pause my season five DVD of 24
Me: Oh, the one where it turned out it was all a government consp…
Bruce: Whoa! What are you doing? Shut up!
Me: Er, sorry.
Bruce: Man, I dropped my McNuggets because of that. Hold on while I order again.
Me: What about the referral?
Bruce: Gah. Let me ask for replays from all the camera angles. That should take enough time to make the call. 

(Bruce makes call and gets into an argument with the McDonalds guy over delivery to the stadium. "Sir, the security will never let pass the Darth Vader toy in our Happy Meal")

Bruce: Well, Ash, replays suggest Wilson was hit outside the line and was offering a shot.
Me: What shot?
Bruce: Something between a nudge and a prod.
Me: That's not a shot.
Bruce: You're the boss.
Me: Yup.

And so I gave him out to what was clearly not a shot that you'd find in the MCC coaching manual.

My other game will be between Zimbabwe and Kenya, who seem perfectly harmonious on the surface but are in fact embroiled in a a bitter battle over who is a better friend of South Africa, and whose marathon runners are skinnier. The ICC tells me my role in these matches will be like Norway's in international bilateral issues.

Now that you know the true story, please write a retraction and issue a public apology.

And between you and me, Taufel nicks hotel shampoo, Harper once pretended he knew what the Hadron Collider was but actually didn't, and Doctrove does not think Lara is the greatest batsman ever.

Yours sincerely,
M.USMAN ARSHAD