Trust Daryl Harper to fight back with vengeance. Having being pushed into retirement, one game too early, Harper has come out with his guns blazing, pointed at the Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni and the Indian team.
To give you a bit of a background, Harper had decided to retire from international umpiring at the end of the third and the final Test between India and West Indies at Dominica. This was after the ICC had removed Harper from the list of the elite umpires’ panel. He was to officiate in the first and the third game.
As it turned out, the first Test at Jamaica turned out to be his last one. Amidst uproar over some of the worst umpiring seen at this level, Harper withdrew from the third game of the series and decided that he had had enough. The criticism had involved the Indian captain Dhoni commenting that had the umpiring been good enough, they would have been back in the hotel long ago.
An unhappy Harper has now questioned the media over facts around the decision-making. He said that there were a total of two mistakes that he had made in the game, of which only one would have been overturned had the DRS been used. There were reports that a total of nine errors had been made by Harper.
One would want to believe Harper but the bare facts are that Harper was way beyond his sell-by date. Mistakes had begun to creep in his game far too regularly and while they were genuine mistakes and not a bias, the Indians had the right to feel aggrieved.
The problem is, and as pointed out by Harper, Dhoni’s statement to the press on the umpiring was no different from a batsman’s reaction at being given out wrongly. So, if a batsman is fined for his transgression, Dhoni should have been as well. After all, he is the captain and can hardly set a good example if he were to react in this manner.
The other revelations from Harper have Dhoni telling the umpire, “We have had issues with you before,” when Praveen Kumar was removed from the bowling attack after jumping on to the danger area thrice. While warning the bowlers unofficially before giving them an official warning is the norm followed, it is not a rule and the umpire Harper seemed to have played it by the book. Then, Dhoni had no right to say what he did, if he did, to the umpire – it does make for another case for a reprimand.
There was another example cited by Harper; that of Abhinav Mukund running down to the umpire while making an appeal. Harper has said that he spoke to Dhoni about this, extolling him to control his players, but the captain was very reluctant in even wanting to hear him out.
Interestingly, India are currently in England playing in a Test series. England have themselves had the bitter end of some umpiring by Harper before and the Australian umpire has been roundly criticised by their press. However, it will be interesting to see if the Indian captain gets chastised by the media there if and when they do get the chance to do so.