I was hit by the cricket ball

After reading the title, wondering what is the big deal :-). I accept. Not a big deal for you. Neither it is for me now, but when I was hit, it was indeed painful. Very very painful. And I have been hit twice.

Both the occasions when I was umpiring. So umpiring is not as safe as it looks on the TV screen. We as umpires do not have to face the likes of Brett Lee or Shane Bond to be hit. But that does not prevent us from being hit either. It is not that I have been hit only twice, but these two occasions were really painful.

The first occasion was when I was in Belgium last year, 2010. It was around the beginning of the season. The match was between Antwerp Indians CC v Belgium Development side (U-19). It was AICC batting, first innings of the game. The batsman (if I remember correctly) was Sehul Javeri. He was hitting the ball all round the park. It was very evident that BDS would have to chase some very big score. Sehul hit a perfect straight drive. This occasion I was at the bowling end. The ball was coming straight towards me. It was at my face height. It was coming really fast. This was not the first time that I was in such a situation. The only thing that I had to do was to get away from the line of the ball. On a normal day, I would have done so. As I had mentioned in one of my previous post, I have been struggling with my knee for more than a year now. June 2010 was the time when I was just recovering from my injury. At that point of time, to make rapid movements from one position to other was a huge problem for me. In umpiring, one has to do that a lot. Without any doubt last season, I had been struggling to move around. In this situation, when the ball was coming towards me, to prevent myself from being hit, I had to move away, but my knee did not help. The ball was very close and the only thing that I could do was to raise my hand to prevent myself from being it on the face. All this happened in span of couple of seconds. It was well in time and the ball hit my elbow (right at the joint) and it was a nasty blow. The next moment, I was on the ground with excruciating pain. Luckily, ice cubes were available with the home team (AICC) and I rubbed the point of injury with ice for about 5 minutes. I felt some relief. Later, I wrapped up few pieces for ice in my handkerchief. Then resumed my umpiring with the handkerchief tied around my elbow. I continued like that till the ice melted. The pain was still there but bearable and did not impact my umpiring much, though I had two injuries to manage now (one on my knee and another on my elbow). But somehow I managed both and the game as well. Luckily, I did not have any fracture, there was no swelling, but I had to live with the pain for another couple of weeks.

The next incident was this year in February back in India. It was a game between Twentieth Century CC and Minerva CC. The game was played in Chennai Medical College ground. This was the most uneven ground that I had come across. But we had no other choice but to play the game. The fielders were having tough time fielding the ball, as the ball would suddenly jump in front of them. The maximum damage would be done when the fielder is at the boundary. He would be all set to field the ball and then all of a sudden the ball would take an unprecedented turn or bounce (because of the unevenness of the ground) and will cross the boundary. On one such occasion, the ball crossed the boundary. I was umpiring at the bowling end. I have the habit of scoring as well when I am umpiring. On this occasion, as the ball crossed the boundary, I signalled 4 to the scorer and then I was busy recording the 4 on my card. My attention was completely towards the card. The fielder threw the ball towards the bowler. The ball pitched in front of the bowler, the bowler was ready to collect. At this point of time, the ball took a vicious turn and bounced high and by the time I realized what happened, I was down on the ground. The ball had hit my left jaw joint. The pain was unbearable. More than the pain, I was worried about any possible fracture of the jaw. My jaw had already been fractured once in the past (not while playing or umpiring) and I was still bearing the scar (figuratively) of that. So I did not want another one. With all these thoughts in mind, I was releived to know that one of the team had ice with them. I touched my jaw and there was very little swelling, which gave me a hope that there was no fracture. I tried to open my mouth wide open and I was able to do it with no severe pain. This was another positive. But I had to rub the jaw with ice to prevent the injury from worsening. I did it for a while and then, like previous incident, I wrapped some ice in the handkerchief and held it against my jaw with the left hand and resumed the game. So with one hand on my jaw, I began umpiring as well. I am not sure, if I was being foolish or being brave (in my opinion, neither of them), but I wanted to carry on with the game. In my assessment (as in previous incident as well), the injury was not severe enough for me to leave the field. I was able to manage the game, without any problem. The game got over but like before, I had to bear this pain for another week or two. In this case it was even more painful as whenever I had to eat something, I had to bear this pain.

That completes the narration of the two painful incidents that I had. Wondering why I had to come up with this now, as both the incidents are not recent one. The answer is very simple, I am making an honest attempt to keep my blog alive. With season coming to an end, I will not have any games in the recent future. That would mean that I will not have any game that I could discuss in this blog. The result, another break in my writing. So I thought, I will come up with some incidents from my past.

Hope it was not a painful reading. :) Will try to come up with something less painful (if you are lucky, more interesting) next time. :)

Game 9 this season

As promised in my previous post, here I am with a write up on my game on May 1, 2011. I know it is more than a week late, but anyway, it is better than not coming up with one. Sorry for the choice of the title. I could not come up with anything better.

May 1 is normally a holiday. It was even Sunday this time. I was not fortunate to have a day off. I had to stand in this 50 overs game, that too on a very hot day.

This was an interesting game as it was between the top two teams of the Division 4A. It was game between TSRMSC and Jupiter SC. TSRMSC was at the top of the table having won all 10 games so far. Jupiter SC had just lost 1 game out of 10 played. So, that meant that if TSRMSC won this game, they would be the champions. But if Jupiter SC won this game, then there would be a play off between the same two teams to decide the champion. So that means we umpires had a tough game ahead.

My colleague for the day was Mr K. Raghuram. He too qualified as an umpire in 2009 with me. This season, since I was not in India for most part of the season, this was only my 9th game. But this guy had already done 50+ games this season and overall he has done some 75 games in just two seasons. He has already been rewarded for his dedication. He has done two Division 1 games (3 days game) so far and he is expected to get Division 1 games in the beginning of the next season. So here was a guy from whom, I can draw some inspiration and work really hard to beat his count :-).

Now let me come back to the game :). The venue for the game was IIT Stadium. TSRMSC won the toss and elected to field. This was a surprise choice, as I have never seen any team in these leagues electing to field first. This meant that they had tremendous confidence in their bowling attack. I hoped that their bowling does come good and we had a shorter game. Remember, the heat was already too much at 9:30 in the morning.

The game started at 9:30 AM and the very first over offered an opportunity to the fielding team. But the fielder at first slip missed a sharp catch. Jupiter started their batting with aggression and were around 7 per over till wicket fell in each of the 5th and 6th over. Jupiter were 41/2 then. Then steadily their run rate started dipping.

It was just 10 overs and we were all sweating profusely. Though the first water break was scheduled only at 10:30 AM, we were allowing the teams to have water during the over breaks. More the frequency of such break, it would mean that there could be a delay in finishing the game. At the same time, lesser such breaks would mean that we would not have enough players in good conditions till the end of the game. So, we as an umpires had to strike that balance.

Meanwhile, another wicket fell in 11th over. Jupiter were now 58/3, you can see the run rate has already come down. This fall of wicket was something special. This kind of incident happened for the first time in my umpiring career (still premature to call it a career :)). The bowler was bowling from my end, left arm bowler, bowling round the wicket, coming diagonal. It was right hand batsman. The ball pitched outside the off stump, the batsman lunged forward to reach the ball, the ball turned away from him, caressing the edge of the bat, the keeper took the catch and as soon as he completed it, he whipped off the bails in a flash, the batsman in the process of lunging, dragged his back foot outside the crease. In the excitement, all of them appealed to the striker's end umpire and the umpire had no hesitation in giving the batsman out. Then I went to my colleague and told him that it was a legal catch as well, which meant that catch takes precedence when compared to stumping. So it had to be recorded as caught behind and not stumping. My colleague agreed and we asked the scorer to record it as caught behind.

After couple of overs, of the same bowler, the batsman tried to go for a slog sweep, he missed it completely. The ball rose and hit the helmet of the batsman and fell short of the man in gully. The fielder dived but could not get it. The captain was disappointed with the fielder's effort. The captain asked me if the ball had hit the bat, to which I responded in negative. The captain was disappointed with my response. I do not know if he was sure that the batsman had hit, why he had to ask me :). Anyway, everyone thought that it had hit the bat during the sweep, but somehow I was not convinced. Thankfully the catch was not taken, so no damage done (to me :), of course).

Another couple of overs, there was a huge appeal from the fielders and a mild appeal from the bowler from my end for LBW. I turned it down as the ball was high and there was no way it could have hit the stumps. When I could see the the bails below the level of ball, and the ball is rising, it could not have been out. As the bowler was walking back to his run up, his captain told him that the appeal should have been full hearted, only then he could get a better result (I think the previous incident contributed to this remark). This is not the first time I have heard such comments from the players. They completely forget that we do not base our decisions solely on how confident the bowler is (sometimes that also contributes), but we base our decisions on the facts that we see. They always has this notion of louder and longer their appeal is, better is their chances of getting a decision in their favor, which is not the case. Anyway, the decision was made and game progressed without any issue.

Another wicket fell in the 19th over and then there was a drought of wickets for another 18 overs. These 18 overs, with no wickets falling and the heat having its impact, we were all getting drained. It was very much visible in the body language of the fielding team. In the 30th over, the bowler (was bowling spin) bowled a ball well above the waist high, it was really high but still below the shoulder level. I immediately called it no ball, which was a correct decision. It was my next step which increased the temperature on the ground further. I gave first warning for unfair delivery. The captain was of the opinion that it was a slow bowler, hence the warning was not valid. My colleague confirmed that it demanded a warning but the captain of the fielding team was not impressed. Neither were we with his on field behavior. The wicket keeper even went to the extent of telling my colleague to go and check the rule book. The players always have their own interpretation of the rules. The rule does talk about the slow bowl being bowled above shoulder high as dangerous and not when it is bowled above waist high. So it is the speed of the bowl that counts and not the nature of the bowler. If the bowler is bowling spin, does not mean that he is necessarily bowling slow.

Finally the relief came for the fielding team in 39th over when they were able to break the 5th wicket partnership. The innings lasted full 50 overs but the batsmen in hurry to score quick lost their wickets and the final score of Jupiter read 214/10 at the end of 50 overs. My hope at the toss that the first innings would end soon did not happen and we had to spend full 3 hours 40 mins in the scorching heat.

The next innings started at scheduled time of 1:45 PM. TSRMSC being at the top of the table, I expected a fight from them in this innings, which would mean that the innings would last for full 50 overs. I prepared myself mentally to stand in the heat for next three hours. But it was not and auspicious start for TSRMSC, they lost their first wicket in the 2nd over when the batsman was adjudged LBW. The batsman was visibly upset, not that he was justified. He stayed there in crease for quiet sometime. Thereafter TSRMSC started losing wickets at regular interval. At the end of 11th over they were 30/5. The bowler was on hatrick at the end of this over but could not get that in his next over. The heat was taking a toll and water was coming in the field almost at the end of every over. The fall of wickets continued and I could not see any real fight from the batting side. The innings finally folded in 30th over. TSRMSC scored just 87. The match ended more than an hour before the scheduled time. This was a relief for everyone except the losing team, of course.

This means that TSRMSC and Jupiter SC will have another game to decide the champion in their zone. Not sure who will umpire that game. For now, this game was over and it was a relief for me. I had to leave the same night for Bangalore, so this would give me some time to relax before I start for my travel. The cricket season 2010-11 is coming to an end. I am not sure, how many more games I will get. But I will try my best to keep you all updated. Till then have a nice time.