One of the job requirements of a cricket umpire is that he should be a saint. His decision is not only final but has to be accepted, smiling and keeping a stiff upper lip at the same time.
Normally an umpire melts into the scene but some umpires become even more famous than the players, not so much for their exceptional skills but for their antics. Idris Baig was one such umpire; the cricket field was a stage for him and he played the role of the hero and villain and it depended on his mood.
There was no television in the days when he was Pakistan’s premier umpire but he was aware that there was radio commentary and that there would be dull moments and Jamsheed Marker and I would have to fill those moments with some light banter and there would always be Idris Baig. If the crowd got rowdy, he would admonish it. He would walk up to the rowdy section, with measured rather than hurried steps. More often than not, he would be hooted down and then he would sue for peace and implore the crowd to behave itself. He would succeed in pacifying it and then walk back with the same measured steps and with no sign that his dignity was bruised.
Bhai Idris, as we affectionately called him, was a Dilli-walla and he had played first class cricket for the Delhi & District Cricket Association (DDCA) and told me that he was a contemporary of my eldest brother Nasir who too had played for the DDCA. He must have been for he remembered coming to our family home, Al-Kureish on Harding Avenue and meeting my father, the Colonel.
Cricket was his whole life and he lived and breathed the game. I think he worked for the PWD for he was in charge of its cricket team though I vaguely remember him telling me that he owned a small jeweller’s shop. That could have been his family business. Both as a man and an umpire, he stood upright. I never saw him grovel or be obsequious. I had seen him be respectful and affectionate and he could be haughty but there was a warm person in him. I cannot recall whether he chewed paan himself but he carried a paan-case and flip it open and offer me a paan. He was always smartly dressed and he wore a felt hat that made him look like an action-hero.
He had earned a reputation of being a patriotic umpire but in those days visiting teams to the subcontinent assumed that not only were the umpiring standards poor but umpiring was included in the home advantage. Even our own public considered Idris Baig to be Kardar’s secret weapon. My mother, who knew nothing about cricket, though cricket was as much a staple diet in our home as aloo-gosht, used to listen to the cricket commentaries and could tell from my voice whether Pakistan was faring well or poorly. One day, Pakistan had had a pretty rough time in the field. Kardar dropped in that evening. My mother cornered him and wanted to know why Idris Baig had played so badly! Kardar went crimson.
I was close to Kardar but never once saw or heard him giving any instructions to him. In my book, he was a good umpire who made his share of mistakes but he was an honourable man and he was not a cheat, no more than Dickie Bird was and I have seen Dickie make some whoppers, invariably to the advantage of the England team. In 1974 in the Oval Test, Dennis Amiss was run-out by yards from a direct hit and was given not out. He went on to make a double century and England was able to draw the match. I was the manager of the team and interviewed by BBC-television about the run-out. I said the electronic eye was faster than the human eye and we had no complaints about the umpiring. In his book, Dickie Bird accepts that he made a mistake in this particular incident. In his case it was an honest error but had it been Idris Baig it would have been cheating.
But Idris Baig will go down in cricket history as the umpire who was roughed up by members of a visiting team and no less than a MCC team, the custodian of the game’s conscience and keeper of its faith. The MCC ‘A’ team’s tour had been a bad tempered one from the beginning. The English had not quite gotten over that Brittania no longer ruled the waves and Union Jack flew only on its Embassy building. Tension had been building up and as the MCC ‘A’ continued to lose, the bitching about the umpiring intensified. The team was poorly served by the local British community and by its own visiting media.
There had been a banquet on the fateful evening in which the captain had asked his vice-captain to make the speech and the vice-captain in turned passed the baton to the senior professional Alan Watkins who said that the next Test should be played in the Khyber Pass with rifles. Alas! He was ignorant of history too for the British would have had their butt kicked. A local poet read out his poem and Jamsheed Marker was convinced that it was the poem that had triggered the incident.
“They got the wrong man, it is the poet who should have killed for his bad verses,” he said, drawing on Shakespeare.
Kardar, Jamsheed and I were at the PAF Mess when two of our players, I think it was Mahmood Hussain and Shujauddin Butt, dashed in to inform us that the MCC players had ‘abducted’ Idris Baig. Idris was staying at the Services Hotel and the MCC at the Dean’s Hotel. They had forcibly taken him in a tonga to their hotel. We rushed to the Dean’s Hotel which had been roused from its sleepiness. There was a gathering storm. Idris was there nursing his wounded vanity and he narrated his version. Six or seven MCC players who appeared to be in high spirits brought about by the intake of beer came into his room, they were brandishing water-pistols (!) and they dragged him into one of the tongas and took him to their hotel and roughed him up. Kardar was so livid that he went to Donald Carr’s room, he was the MCC captain and told him that he and his team should pack their bags as the tour was over.
There followed a meeting while Crawford White of The Daily Express, Brian Chapman of The Mirror and I paced up and down the small garden of the Dean’s Hotel. We were allowed in the meeting after it had been decided that the MCC would offer an unconditional apology. Being the only Pakistani journalist present and having a time-advantage over the others, I scored a world scoop.
Idris Baig was shaken up but I can’t help feeling that he started to enjoy all the attention he was getting. Suddenly, he found himself John Gielgud playing Hamlet. He put one of his hands in a sling and when he got bored with that, he changed hands. It is not given to every umpire to feature in Time magazine, but there he was on its pages in a story that poked much fun at the expense of the MCC. Idris Baig had arrived but departed as well for I don’t think he umpired again. That’s my recollection, but I could be wrong.
One of a kind? Definitely yes. Bhai Idris belongs just not in a gallery of cricket persons but in its hall of fame, even if it is for the wrong reasons. Not only the good die young, the not so young also die and he passed on, hopefully to another cricket field where he dons the umpire’s coat and his felt hat.
One of the job requirements of a cricket umpire is that he should be a saint. His decision is not only final but has to be accepted, smiling and keeping a stiff upper lip at the same time.
