So, finally series has finished. India completed the 4-0 whitewash. It was not really a huge surprise that India did so well in the series. It was a very inexperienced Austrilian team. 4-0 victory is a nevertheless fantastic achievement. As people normally do at the end of a series, I was thinking who is biggest find in the series? Ravindra Jadeja? Mittchel Starc? Steve Smith? Bhuvneshwar Kumar? No. For me the biggest find of this series is not a bowler or a batsman. He is not a wicket-keeper either. He is the most important part of a cricket match but is very scarcely noticed. He is an umpire. Richard Kettleborough was the find of this India-Australia series as far as I am concerned.
It is often we wonder if Pujara is the new Dravid? Some news channels called Kohli the new Sachin. After Dhawan's innings we thought if he can be the new Sehwag. When Irfan Pathan came into the Indian team, we all wondered if he is the new Kapil Dev. We are all obsessed with labeling people as the "New" someone. I will also venture along the same lines in this post. I will stick my neck out and call Richard Kettleborough the new Simon Tauffel. After Tauffel retired from umpiring I thought he left a void in cricket. It is not common to have such young umpires. I can hardly recall Simon Tauffel making an error. In some ways Richard Kettleborough reminded me of Simon Tauffel. Maybe because, he too like Tauffel has started at a very young age. Also the fact that he got almost everything right, expect probably one LBW shout against Sachin.
The most impressive thing about Kettleborough's umpiring was that he was having the most difficult conditions to umpire. With ball turning and bouncing so sharply, and with all the close-in fielders around with the amount of appeals going around and to add to all that, with the amount of noise in the stadiums, it can become a nightmare of the umpires. India playing three spinners meant that there pressure always there on the umpires. The amount of concentration that goes into while umpiring in these conditions is immense. In the LBWs, they have to decide in a few seconds if the ball had hit the pad first or the bat. In the backdrop of all the noise in the crowd, they have got to listen very carefully to the sounds from the bat hitting the pad, bat hitting the ground, ball hitting the pad, ball hitting the bat and decide exactly what happened. They cannot loose their focus with all the appeals going around. It must be one heck of a job. After 90 overs of work, the umpires must be completely exhausted. They must mentally drained.
Now just to put everything into perspective it was Richard Kettleborough's first tour of India. Here everything is different from what he finds back home in the UK. Just like the players, it must be really tough for umpires to adjust to different conditions. But, Kettleborough did manage to adjust and did extremely well.
I think it is just like when we see a young overseas player play really well in his first tour of the sub-continent or a young Indian player in his very first overseas tour finds no problem with the bouncing and the swinging ball. When we see something like this, we get excited and tip him as the next big thing for that team. In similar terms, to perform so well in his first tour of the sub-continent I reckon Richard Kettleborough is the next big thing in the umpiring world!
It is often we wonder if Pujara is the new Dravid? Some news channels called Kohli the new Sachin. After Dhawan's innings we thought if he can be the new Sehwag. When Irfan Pathan came into the Indian team, we all wondered if he is the new Kapil Dev. We are all obsessed with labeling people as the "New" someone. I will also venture along the same lines in this post. I will stick my neck out and call Richard Kettleborough the new Simon Tauffel. After Tauffel retired from umpiring I thought he left a void in cricket. It is not common to have such young umpires. I can hardly recall Simon Tauffel making an error. In some ways Richard Kettleborough reminded me of Simon Tauffel. Maybe because, he too like Tauffel has started at a very young age. Also the fact that he got almost everything right, expect probably one LBW shout against Sachin.
The most impressive thing about Kettleborough's umpiring was that he was having the most difficult conditions to umpire. With ball turning and bouncing so sharply, and with all the close-in fielders around with the amount of appeals going around and to add to all that, with the amount of noise in the stadiums, it can become a nightmare of the umpires. India playing three spinners meant that there pressure always there on the umpires. The amount of concentration that goes into while umpiring in these conditions is immense. In the LBWs, they have to decide in a few seconds if the ball had hit the pad first or the bat. In the backdrop of all the noise in the crowd, they have got to listen very carefully to the sounds from the bat hitting the pad, bat hitting the ground, ball hitting the pad, ball hitting the bat and decide exactly what happened. They cannot loose their focus with all the appeals going around. It must be one heck of a job. After 90 overs of work, the umpires must be completely exhausted. They must mentally drained.
Now just to put everything into perspective it was Richard Kettleborough's first tour of India. Here everything is different from what he finds back home in the UK. Just like the players, it must be really tough for umpires to adjust to different conditions. But, Kettleborough did manage to adjust and did extremely well.
I think it is just like when we see a young overseas player play really well in his first tour of the sub-continent or a young Indian player in his very first overseas tour finds no problem with the bouncing and the swinging ball. When we see something like this, we get excited and tip him as the next big thing for that team. In similar terms, to perform so well in his first tour of the sub-continent I reckon Richard Kettleborough is the next big thing in the umpiring world!
