Shouting from the Hop

Most of the Spring of 2010, either side of our holiday in Mauritius, was taken up by one of two things, either finishing my book, or attending a cricket umpiring course.

I was lucky in that notice of the umpire’s course was sent to me by the team I umpire for during the regular summer season in England (Chislehurst and West Kent C.C.- left), and after a little bit of badgering, I encouraged them to pay for the course rather than having to fork out for it myself. This was most beneficial, as I was still without a regular job at that time. It wasn’t expensive (£40 covered the ten-week course and included all of the training material too, plus an annual membership to the local Association of Cricket Umpire’s branch), but every little bit helped at that time.

I went to the course on most weeks, and was given homework to do for the two weeks that I missed due to our Mauritius trip. Actually, I was due to miss the exam which was being held on the last week of the course, but due to the fact that on one earlier occasion we could not gain access to the building where the course was being held (due to some mishap over keys and who was responsible for unlocking the doors to the building!) the exam week was put back seven days, which allowed me to attend.

It was fun sitting with about ten other guys, plus one woman, who were interested in being qualified umpires, though I must admit that the knowledge base of some of them was pretty poor at the start, with many basic questions receiving the wrong answer when opened to the floor.

Most weeks we had one of three guys giving us a talk (or taking it in turns) over a couple of hours on specific Laws, or parts of Laws, and it was quite interesting and I did learn a lot. It was news to me that some competitions (Test matches for instance!) have many of their own regulations that supercede the Laws of cricket (for instance, a bouncer that passes a long way over a batters head is usually called a wide in Test cricket, whereas the Laws state that it should be called as a No Ball, as it is an unfair delivery!).

The exam on the last week of the course was quite nerve wracking for me, as I hadn’t been at the dummy run the week beforehand; it was also one of the first examinations I had sat since leaving school many, many, years previously! Anyway, the answers were pretty much all multiple choice, and we all watched the computer projection which asked the question (it was also read out), and then gave us two, three, four or sometimes five possible answers. There were 64 questions like this, and then three where you had to work out how many runs should be awarded (where fielders handled the ball or threw the ball deliberately over the boundary with or without no-balls and wides thrown in for instance). Most questions were grouped around one Law, so we had about about six slides where you had to decide if the bowler (from looking at where his feet were) had bowled a no-ball or not, who was run out when a batter had a runner in certain scenarios, that sort of thing.

I thought I did quite well, and with an 80% pass rate I was quietly confident I had done enough to pass (I couldn’t imagine getting 13 questions wrong!). A few weeks later, I got a letter with news that I had passed with a score of 94%, which meant I got four questions wrong (I had been worried about five during the exam, but I don’t know if they were the same ones I got wrong as we didn’t see any answers).

I later heard that only one of the people who sat the exam failed, which was a good thing, though I do not know who that person was…

My cricket club were obviously happy that I had qualified as an umpire, and that they could see that the money they put up had been put to good use. I gave four LBW's in the second game of the season, which prompted the Captain to declare that I must have learnt that Law on the course, as previously I had been reluctant to put my finger up too often. That wasn't the case - it was just that I thought all four were definitely out, whereas previously (and subsequently in fact) I gave far fewer positive decisions.

The other mainstay of the early months of the year was my attempt at finishing my book about my cricket travel’s watching England during the 1990’s entitled Barmy Days and Balmy Nights. I chugged away at it, and with each chapter covering just one tour I went on, it was easy to see the progress I was making. I had got sort of stuck in the 1994 West Indies tour, but once I finished that, I quite quickly bashed my way through the possibly more familiar more recent tours with aplomb.

I was quite happy taking my time with the book, researching it properly, and it did give some focus to certain days when nothing much was happening at home on the job front, and I suppose I’m quite grateful for that.

Then, one thing made me hasten my writing and attempt to finish the book quickly – I had a sniff of a job. An old friend sent me a change of email address notification, and I responded by asking if he had a new job somewhere. He said no, but that he had outsourced his department, hence the change of email. I then wished him well and reminded him that if he needed any help, he only had to ask. And to my surprise, he did ask! I had to meet with his under-manager, rather than him (which was fine by me), and after chasing him up for an interview, we finally met in the middle of May. It took until mid-June for me to start work, and so that gave me about a month to try to finish my book, which I really wanted to do so it did not compromise my new job.

I spent upwards of six hours typing away at my PC at home trying to get the thing finished, and eventually I came to the end – the end of my last tour, and so the end of the book. I re-read it several times, trying to get rid of any spelling mistakes (amazing how many you find, even with a spell-checker, and after reading it over and over a few times!) and finally I could declare myself happy with it and call it finished.

I researched getting it published, and how much that would cost, and I did get some interest, especially from one publisher who liked my concept and was very keen on the marketing areas that I had suggested. My biggest problem was that I wanted to try to get it published prior to this Xmas (2010), but there was little chance of that happening unless I undertook a huge cost myself.

I asked a couple of keen cricket mad friends to read it - neither of whom had been on a cricket tour, but who I could trust to be honest – and they gave me valuable feedback. One lasting piece of advice was to put it down for six months and leave it alone, then come back to it and see what should be done. With no chance of meeting my self-imposed Xmas deadline, I heeded this pretty much. So the book is finished, but I have to decide whether to publish it as it is (a very personal account of touring watching England) or expand it to cover touring history with my own experience as the backbone of the book. I have yet to make my decision, but it may well end up somewhere in both forms!

Then I started work again, and playing had to stop…for now.