Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

138 game as its matches were beamed into fee-paying homes around the globe. However, there were already matters of concern that prompted the ICC to draw up a formal Code of Conduct. Among the main issues addressed were slow over-rates, advertising on players’ kit and clothing, and dissent and other unacceptable forms of behaviour. To ensure compliance with the Code, it was decreed that an independent match referee with power to impose fines and suspensions should be appointed for all international matches. The international programme for 1991/92 contained just 12 Test matches, but the scheduling of 77 ODIs heralded the direction in which the game was moving. All the matches were still umpired by officials appointed by the home board, and it would be another twelve months before cameras were installed to enable a third umpire to assist with line decisions. When match referees were introduced, the whiff of imperial patronage in the governance of the game was still detectable in the first appointments. ‘Colin Cowdrey asked me if I’d like to do it,’ Mike recalls, and the other referees chosen that winter were also Oxbridge men, friends of Cowdrey who had played for England: Peter May, Donald Carr and Raman Subba Row. For matches played by England in New Zealand the principle of neutrality was observed with the appointment of Peter Burge from Australia. Mike’s first match was the Brisbane Test, starting on 29 November 1991. Given a spot from which to watch the match without distraction, he followed the play with dutiful attention but, as with the matches that followed, there was little cause for him to intervene or impose any penalties. He then flew around Australia overseeing seven one-day matches in the Benson and Hedges World Series Cup, a grandiosely styled triangular tournament that included West Indies. The tour of duty ended with Australia’s Second Test against India that began on Boxing Day at Melbourne. In the middle of their World Series schedule the Indians played a one-day match against the Prime Minister’s Eleven at Canberra, for which Mike’s services were not required. However, at Cowdrey’s instigation arrangements had been made for him to stay at the Prime Minister’s residence, where he was able to renew acquaintance with Bob Hawke, Australia’s premier at the time. A Rhodes scholar, Hawke had had been a contemporary of Cowdrey and Mike at Oxford. Though he never managed a first- class appearance, Hawke had played in a trial match and later travelled as twelfth man with the University team. ‘A future prime Triumphs and tribulations as Chairman