The Summer Field

148 developed out of experience ... in practice the umpire finds himself developing instinctive assessments and making snap judgements. Umpires, then, like players, drew on stored memories of identical events. Cowdrey suggested an umpire looked at how the ‘central characters in the plot’ reacted to an appeal. As that suggested, appeals could be theatrical; fielders might fake certainty, batsmen innocence. Such dishonesty corrupted the umpire’s store of experience and made his job harder. From umpiring a few times, Cowdrey urged batsmen to walk if they knew they were out, because the more decisions you left to umpires, the more mistakes umpires would make, giving players – and crowds – an excuse to be forever resentful. * Scorers could cheat too. We hear less of it, whether because scorers worked in private unlike umpires, or because one team’s honest scorer could watch the other. At Wirksworth in July 1875, the home team reached 50 for eight after Riddings made 55, ‘and the excitement became intense’, the Derby Mercury reported. The Riddings scorer was seen not placing a run to Wirksworth, even after he had the error pointed out to him, and ‘showing anything but a friendly spirit’. A batsman was hit on the eye and retired hurt, but the last pair made two hits and won: Umpiring and Scoring From a boys’ annual, the scoring record of Len Hutton’s first innings 63 at Trent Bridge in June 1951, where South Africa went on to win.