WHEN I sat down to talk to Steve Bucknor, it looked as if we were on the battlefront; the war correspondent etching out the colonel’s past. There was shattered glass on the floor. The aluminum frames that had bordered the glass were shaken out of the sliders, and loosely hung against a scratched wall. There was the open suitcase on the unmade, dusty bed and some scattered papers, preparations of a hurried retreat in the making, as well as some pieces of cloth half hiding a bruised telephone set that had earlier in the morning been blown off the table and thrown against the wall.
No, we were not in some bunker on the outer reaches of the Line of Control in the Kashmir valley. It was room 314 in a local hotel where a foreign contingent comprising a cricket team, broadcasters, officials, umpires and referees were packing up and leaving in a hurry; their journey home brought forward by a week, due to a tangled mess that lay on the Club Road. It was the afternoon of the day that had brought war to cricket; a relationship unimaginable from the days when the village blacksmith would trundle down the pasture and hurl a cricket ball at the butcher’s assistant in the weekly village cricket game on a Sunday in some English meadow. Perhaps the whole scene was symbolic of the stage where cricket had arrived from its innocent beginnings of a gentleman’s game. It is now brutal confrontation; no quarter asked, no quarter given.
And amongst this traumatic setting we sat and chatted about cricket! The guilt of talking pleasant reminiscences within hours of a horrific happening that had torn up not just priceless human life but Pakistan’s cricket-hosting future as well, was not lost on both of us. However, man has always absorbed traumatic events and then got on with life, albeit with a more burdened heart. Thus, we both told ourselves that the world has to move forward. And began our conversation.
Steve Bucknor gels the mature composure of a Morgan Freeman and the suavity of a Sidney Poitier, with a touch of a Michael Holding with his thick Jamaican accent. Steve, who began his international cricket umpiring career some thirteen years ago in his native Jamaica, was only two hours away from breaking the record of most Test matches supervised when the bomber hit. The delay in breaking the record was now farthest from his mind. Like tens of millions of others in the country and all over the world, he was obviously in shock at what had happened, and sad at the deaths and injuries. Yet, he was willing to sit and talk of his early days in cricket, on umpiring difficulties and joy, on technology innovations and player psychology.
Though there were only a couple of hours for his departure, and all his belongings were still scattered (since everyone that day just absent-mindedly ended up in the lobby every half hour,) he was not rushed in his thoughts. It was reflective of his calm and cool personality — never hasty, but thorough, and balanced in his evaluation. As he bent to sit down across the mahogany desk, he paused, picked up the cushion on the sofa, took it to the debris filled balcony, impassively shook off the pieces of tiny broken glasses, placed it back quietly and sat down without a word in anticipation of my first question, just as if he had walked up to the pitch precisely at 9.55, placed the bails on the stumps, and stood patiently for the first ball of the day to be bowled.
Aside from umpiring in international cricket matches, Steve runs a sports consultancy, and, interestingly enough, has been a qualified international soccer referee for Jamica. He has, in fact, refereed a World Cup football match between Holland and El Salvador before having to retire because in soccer you can’t be a referee after the age of 45. I suppose FIFA is paying tribute to him this year by keeping the opening ceremony of the 2002 World Cup on his birthday, May 31.
The topic turns to speed. Who was the fastest around in his younger days? “Andy Roberts was pretty quick. And I suppose he was the fastest bowler I saw (from the stands).”
And from 22 yards, I probed? “Bret Lee bowled just recently some very quick deliveries. I was on the same pitch as Shoaib Akhtar and it is clear he is very fast. I have seen Allan Donald; I don’t suppose he has bowled anywhere close to 99 miles per hour, but I feel he bowled very quick when I umpired. I’ve seen a few of them but it’s difficult for me to judge who was the quickest, because before that there were deliveries not measured that might have been (faster).”
We talked of the tough job the umpires have, not least of which is braving the varying climatic conditions around the world, despite cricket being a summer sport. Was the Lahore Test the most demanding from this aspect considering the heat in which it was played? “Yes, the Lahore Test was more demanding than any other Test I have umpired in,” said the 56-year-old Bucknor. Even hotter than it is in Test matches in the West Indies, I asked. “West Indies is not as hot. Lahore went up to 39 degrees. In Jamaica we go up to 34 degrees in a Test match. We don’t play cricket in the actual summer. Our cricket ends before that. So it was physically more demanding (in Lahore).”
But when it comes to the people of Pakistan, Steve is overwhelmed with the love he receives every time he visits: “I love the Pakistani people. Their generosity is way ahead. I always walk freely in Pakistan, whether it is daytime or night. I always want to come back.”
Talking of the toughest Test match he has ever umpired in considering other sorts of pressure, he recalls the Ashes Test in Melbourne, where on the last day play started half-an-hour earlier to make up for the lost time on the first day, and the last session became four-and-a-quarter hours as Australia believed they could win the game. “Everyone, including the bowlers, was very tired. My knees were bucking under, but the decision making that day was very good and the Press the next day described it as faultless umpiring,” he says with a quiet, pride-filled emphasis on ‘faultless’. “And when the Press says something like that I don’t go against them.” He adds with a smile.
So has there been a time when he has been hurt by criticism from the media? “Yes, there have been occasions. In fact there was an article written just a few days ago here in Pakistan where criticism was made on me ... in fact the writer was trying to circumcise the elite panel of umpires saying they have been making many mistakes over the years. And there is Bucknor who is thought of as one of the better umpires but he has been making many mistakes. So why is it that when Pakistani umpires make mistakes it is thought of as two different things. Now this criticism refers to Bucknor giving Mark Waugh out caught behind in South Africa. And the article said ‘last year’. I was not in South Africa last year. I was in South Africa in 2002. And when (in that series) Mark Waugh was given out caught behind, I was at square leg. So I had nothing to do with that decision. The article wanted to imply that I might even have helped the ACB (Australian Cricket Board) to end the career of Mark Waugh by making a wrong decision. Sad to say, sorry for the writer, his information was wrong.”
But the criticism has clearly hurt Bucknor’s pride and values. “Whenever I make mistakes I am the first to own because this is what I was taught at school. Whenever you do wrong, say so, say you’re sorry and whether it is accepted or not, let life go on. I don’t mind being criticized. I love being criticized, because it is only when I am criticized that I know what not to do. If there is no criticism then I might feel that I am doing so well and there is nothing else for me to achieve. But the truth must be spoken. That is all I am saying. If you speak the truth then I have no problems.”
As an example, he goes on to volunteer that he gave Nasser Hussain out leg before (here in Pakistan when the ball had touched his bat). “To be criticized about that I have no problems. But it is unfair and untrue to say that I gave Mark Waugh out when I was at square leg. That is what I do not enjoy.”
Pressure, however, is what every umpire is supposed to take. Steve takes it well. No wonder then that he has stood in all of the last three World Cup Finals. However, he remains averse to the constant appealing. He also is now a great believer in availing the help of technology, and would prefer more decisions being referred to the third umpire, in the interest of both teams. However, he is confident that every umpire today does the job in the best spirit and without bias.
We continued talking on so many other aspects, like the bowlers that make him laugh or the ones that give him the toughest time. He told me his opinion about disciplining players with yellow cards and talked of future initiatives he is expecting that the ICC will take in making umpiring more transparent. Also about what is it that bowlers say whenever they beat the bat and what he thinks the batsmen talk about in between overs, or what the umpires talk about every time a wicket falls or they get together during intervals or drinks breaks. It seemed clear that Steve Bucknor is a truly contended and happy man. It is almost as if he is lost in the memories, past and present, of the thing he loves most, and remains at peace with the world.
I asked him the question that just about everybody asks: whenever Steve Bucknor is involved in a decision, why does he take so long and why that smile (some call him Slow Death Bucknor) and nod and finally the raising of the finger? He laughs at that. “It is natural to me. My policy is ‘wait; replay action; think about it; answer all the questions and if all the questions are answered in the positive then the batsman must be given out’. So I wait long enough to convince myself because sometimes he is not out. Then in my waiting I consider if something else happened for me to say ‘not out’. So this is my policy. It is better to wait and make the right decision than to make the wrong decision.”
Just about any batsman who has been given out by Steve Bucknor, or any bowler whose appeal has been turned down by him, will, in all probability tell you, in the end he gets it right just about all the time. And if the audiences have lived through Hitchcockian suspense, the cricket watchers will live through the Bucknor pause.
WHEN I sat down to talk to Steve Bucknor, it looked as if we were on the battlefront; the war correspondent etching out the colonel’s past. There was shattered glass on the floor. The aluminum frames that had bordered the glass were shaken out of the sliders, and loosely hung against a scratched wall. There was the open suitcase on the unmade, dusty bed and some scattered papers, preparations of a hurried retreat in the making, as well as some pieces of cloth half hiding a bruised telephone set that had earlier in the morning been blown off the table and thrown against the wall.
