This article first appeared on cricket-match-special.com on the 13th March 2010.
Umpire Gary Baxter has quickly defended his decision to allow Australian captain Ricky Ponting to be caught behind off his helmet. "It is very simple", said Baxter at the post-game conference, "Both myself and [co-umpire Asad Rauf] agreed before the match to not take this game too seriously since it was a dead rubber and instead spent most of the game checking the score in the England-Bangladesh test on our I-phones".
This remarkably frank admission does go some way to explain the almost completely random umpiring that occurred during the game, with there being some speculation that every time a wicket fell in the Test, the umpires would shout "That's out!" and whichever hapless Australian was at the wicket had to make his bemused way back to the pavillion.
New Zealand cricket kingpin Dan Vettori denied any allegations of threatening umpires using hired goons (a.k.a. Jesse Ryder) and instead said that "fear doesn't breed that kind of bizarre incompetence. ICC training is needed for that".
Ricky Ponting declined to comment saying "I'm not one to talk about the performance of the umpires".
This remarkably frank admission does go some way to explain the almost completely random umpiring that occurred during the game, with there being some speculation that every time a wicket fell in the Test, the umpires would shout "That's out!" and whichever hapless Australian was at the wicket had to make his bemused way back to the pavillion.
New Zealand cricket kingpin Dan Vettori denied any allegations of threatening umpires using hired goons (a.k.a. Jesse Ryder) and instead said that "fear doesn't breed that kind of bizarre incompetence. ICC training is needed for that".
Ricky Ponting declined to comment saying "I'm not one to talk about the performance of the umpires".
No comments:
Post a Comment