 How’s that empire?
Anyone who has played cricket for a decent length of time in Hyderabad knows that in the twin cities, the word ‘umpire’ is pronounced ‘empire’ and the short form of no-ball is ‘nobe’, not ‘no’ as we say it in Tamil Nadu. Back in the seventies and eighties, the umpiring standard was as varied as the general standard of cricket today - from indifferent to occasionally brilliant - but there was no dearth of characters or entertainment.
“Sam’ Swaminathan was one of the front rankers for entertainment value in the manner of poker faced Inspector Clouseau, the French policeman so superbly played by the late Peter Sellers and invariably at the receiving end of the most absurd jokes. Sam tried his best to be stern and all British stiff upper lip, provoking the fielding side into stubborn belligerence, and the occasional sarcastic jibe at his expense, though he was a pretty good umpire.
 One episode some of us remember to this day involved M L Jaisimha, who after a few of his appeals were turned down in succession asked the umpire what time it was, and while Sam took his time over pulling out his watch from his pocket and started to say, “The time is…” in his best BBC voice, Jai snatched his cap from him and told him where he could put something into something else. While Sam was hardly amused, the tittering fielders around him obviously were.
 There were other interesting umpires, far too many to mention individually here. Those who wonder where Steve Bucknot learnt to administer justice infuriatingly slowly have obviously not seen Hyderabad’s Rajan in action. He made a fine art of the late response, rubbing it in with a slowly spreading smile as well, and, no doubt suffering from some disorder of the right arm, began at one stage to specialise in the left handed umpiring decision as well.
One umpire the cricket association surely allotted matches on compassionate grounds was the venerable old Sultan Saab, who, a good umpire in his younger days, was far too shortsighted in our time to pass muster. Once on the tiny Nizam College ground, already smarting from being hit into the balcony of a neighbouring tenement by a tailender, I had to stomach insult added to injury, when Sultan Saab asked me, ”Bhai, tum kuch bolte nahin, kya tha voh, char ya chhe?” (You don’t tell me anything brother, what was it, four or six?)
V Ramnarayan
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