35/35 game, Ducksmen won the toss and batted first. Ducksmen 160/9. Plastics 161/8 from 26.1 overs. Plastics win by 2 wickets.
My first time standing as an umpire for a full game! I was accompanied by various player-umpires throughout the day standing at the other end. The Plastics are the friends I referred to in the introduction who formed a proper cricket club.
The ground is just a large flat area in a public park, maintained by the borough council, with no real facilities, just some changing rooms a few hundred yards away. There is plenty of space outside the boundary in which picnickers were picnicking, children playing, and couples strolling. I was standing at the western end, the Albert Bridge end, so when I was behind the stumps I had a nice view of the power station peeking over the trees. No really, a nice view.
There was only one even slightly contentious moment in the game, when at square leg I gave one of the Plastics out, run out. He gave me an evil glare as he walked off and I could hear him grumbling all the way to the boundary, only to then hear one of his team-mates tell him “nah mate, you were a mile out”.
I was surprisingly knackered by the end of the day, standing around for several hours and occasionally going for a short walk out to square leg and back again is tiring if you’re not used to it and my feet were killing me by the end. And I can see from my pedometer data that I was consistently moving less as the game went on, so not getting away from the stumps so far or so quickly to be in a position to judge bowler’s end run outs. Something that I think will naturally improve over time, but I need to keep an eye on it. The significant error that I made in this game was that I often remembered too late that I should have signalled for byes or leg byes. Not something that will affect the result but it will annoy people who care about their statistics.
A few beers afterwards in the pub with both teams ended a fun day. I didn’t really know until now whether I’d actually enjoy umpiring, but I did. AAA++++ will do again, as they say on eBay.
Larval Stage Umpire 