I was recently given the opportunity to travel to Sydney on an exchange trip to officiate in Sydney Premier Cricket.
In the few days before the trip, I was emailed by Darren Goodger from Cricket NSW. He provided me with the playing conditions, and also let me know that there were going to be eight visiting umpires in Sydney that weekend! He gave me details of a social function that was planned for the Saturday night, where I would get to meet everybody. He later phoned me to discuss the trip and answer any questions that I had. He also assured me that I’d be well looked after, and he let me know who I would be umpiring with so that we could get in touch.
When I arrived in Sydney, I was greeted at the airport by my partner for the weekend, Laurie Borg. Laurie seems to be the Todd Rann of Sydney – he’s umpired hundreds of games over a long period of time! At the lunch break on Saturday we were talking about the number of Test players that we’ve umpired. I only had two, but he had more than he could remember! There must have been at least thirty. Anyway, we used the short trip back to my hotel to discuss trip logistics and also talk about the playing conditions. It seemed like they were a lot closer to Sheffield Shield cricket than our competition is. They use Kookaburra Turf balls, and play 96 overs in a day with three 2 hour sessions and a 40 minute lunch break. There are also some small details in the playing conditions that I thought were interesting, such as the umpires being required to retain the team sheets for the whole season.
On game day, I was once again picked up by Laurie, who also had Al Bonney from country NSW in the car with him. We were all headed to Ashfield, where Western Suburbs’s grounds were located. We dropped Al off at his ground first, then headed to Pratten Park about 5 minutes away. When we arrived, I was impressed firstly by the white picket fence around the entire boundary, and also by the full sized electronic scoreboard, which compares in size to the WACA’s secondary screen! At the ground I met the scorers and the groundsman, and also Billy Hendricks – a NSWCUSA umpire observer. Billy was a bit jet lagged having just arrived back from a trip to South Africa, so when we found out that he thought the start time was 30 minutes earlier than it actually was we made sure to give him plenty of stick for it! Billy gave me some very useful tips at the lunch break.
The game proceeded fairly smoothly. We had a small shower just at the starting time, and also had cause to report one of the batsmen. Western Suburbs had earlier won the toss against Campbelltown-Camden and had chosen to bat on a greenish pitch with some drizzle around. They scored fairly freely through the day, notching up 8/307. The bowler was on a hat trick when they declared! I thought it was a really good score given how slow the outfield was. I think the only time I’ve seen slower was when I played at Rosalie Park in Shenton Park. Coincidentally, I was playing against Western Suburbs in the WASTCA – maybe slow outfields and Western Suburbs go together. Western Suburbs bowled for 10 overs at the end of the day and managed to have Campbelltown at 2/24 overnight.
After play, we drove straight to Club RydeX where I met Darren and many other umpires, both locals and visitors. It was a really interesting evening where we swapped stories of the day and discussed differences in how everything works around the country. It had been a really hot and muggy day, so a recurring comment that I got was that I must be used to it being in Perth. In all honesty I wasn’t used to it at all – Sydney was really humid that day and around 33 degrees. The following day would be worse, still being 42 degrees at 5:30pm!
Sunday was a bit of fun. The club was hosting a “Return to Pratten” event that day for former club members to get back to the ground. There was a bouncy castle set up for the kids, and some clever guys set up an inflatable pool below the scoreboard. I’m not sure if it was filled with water or beer, but those guys definitely had plenty of alcohol available! By the last session, they had some good chants going and were really getting involved, going up for appeals with the players and giving us plenty of instructions on when to put the finger up! Darren wasn’t umpiring on Sunday, so he was also there for almost the whole day, and he gave me a lot of helpful advice after the game.
Western Suburbs won the first innings at 2:32pm and decided to enforce the follow on to attempt an outright. Given the temperature, this was tough news to take, but we managed to battle through the day. We made sure to have plenty of drinks breaks. Laurie was pouring water over his head each time!
To complete the great hospitality shown by Cricket NSW, Laurie invited Al and I back to his house after the game for a home-cooked dinner that was prepared by his lovely wife Sue. We filled out the match reports and the player report (for an audible obscenity) before Laurie drove me back to the hotel. I stayed the night there and flew back to Perth the next morning.
All in all I had a great experience where I learned a lot. Hopefully I had something to offer everyone in NSW too! I really have to thank Matthew Hall, Darren Goodger, Laurie Borg and everyone else at the WACA and Cricket NSW for making everything happen. It was a worthwhile trip and I hope it can continue well into the future!