Wellington female umpire sacked in first game

I agree the girl was nervous and if 90% pass the exam in the first place maybe the exam needs looking at

Actually, Ryan H, I am out there every Saturday that I can umpiring club cricket. I also umpire around NZ and if I can get an early flight back on Saturday from wherever I was umpiring on Friday, I will umpire club cricket on Saturday. Sometimes I am umpiring elsewhere on a Sunday, perhaps Auckland, or Hamilton, or Christchurch so I get a late flight out on Saturday night or an early flight Sunday morning so I can umpire a club game on the Saturday. This is my 27th season umpiring but I have lost count of how many days club cricket I have umpired but it is probably about 400. However, you can check up my rep umpiring career on CricketArchive if you want to get an idea of how much time & effort I put in to umpiring - and those are just the days on the field. Training new umpires, attending umpiring meetings, not to mention researching information for CricketArchive takes up much of my spare time so you can see how much I love this great game. That is why it is so disappointing when a reporter writes an inaccurate, misleading, unbalanced article such as this & followed it up next day with another one that was equally lacking in accuracy & balance.

Rory, have you ever umpired a game of cricket, at any level? I suspect not because it is quite easy to occasionally make a call too early. It was not a lack of knowledge of the laws that led to the wide being called, it was simply a case of making the call before the ball had passed the striker's wicket. Unlike the reporter, who you may be interested to know is a member of the Johnsonville club and sometimes plays in that Hazlett Trophy team, I have spoken to the captain of the fielding team to get the other side of the story & he advised me that the ball would have been a wide if the batsman had not decided to "chase it", but the batsman managed to get a bottom edge which caused the ball to drop down at his feet. As soon as the umpire saw this happen she rescinded the call. By the way, the umpire has neither been dismissed nor sacked and was simply not available for the next couple of weeks, which the reporter was advised of but chose not to report.

Mario, I am not sure you are the fastest bowler in Wellington but your knowledge of the laws is not the best. Refer to Law 38,Run Out, either batsman can be run out off a no ball regardless of whether or not a run was being attempted. So next Saturday if you are playing in the game against Easts and a no ball is called, do not go wandering down the pitch when you are batting because if you are out of your ground & the wicket is put down, you will be given out Run Out. You may even be given out by a lady umpire because Kathy Cross, who has umpired Womens World Cup games & State Shield Mens games will be umpiring that game. By the way, the wide call was rescinded by the umpire concerned in that game as soon as she realised that the batsman had reached it. It wasn't that she did not know the wide law, she just called it too soon. Run out off a no ball is actually more common than calling a wide too soon, Mario, basics really, basics!!!

The lady involved should be banned from umpiring and also banned from any cricket game. Over reaction... i dont know?

I agree completely with Chris. Mr. Powell needs to take a good long look in the mirror.

Look, I am the fastest bowler in Wellington cricket, and I am upset to hear that a bowler was wided after the batsmen hit the ball. I learnt that rule in my very first day of cricket, along with the batsmen not being able to be given 'run out' off a no ball...basics people basics!

This is an overreaction..

I'm not sure if people know or not... but umpires at this level get paid - so they are carrying out their job - if you didn't do the basics on your job correctly your gone!

Great article - doesn't matter if it was a female or male - same would of happened. Guttered for the guys playing a lot of bad calls in that game.

How can we support our up-and-coming players when the basics like umpiring isn't up to standard?

Think people need to stop being to PC

I feel sorry for the young girl, this should not of made the papers.

Maybe she got droped off at the wrong ground and is actually a softball umpire.'Out of bounds', she might of said as she signalled a wide to the umpire.

She will be back, go well girl !!!