Page 24 - Demo

OUR MAN IN THE MIDDLE
Paddy Brown
or many readers, the return of Test Match cricket to free-to-air television will have brought back fond memories of the 2005 Ashes series.
The same summer gave me my earliest memory
of watching cricket with friends. Still at school,
we were fortunate to have a headteacher who sportingly gave us cricket to watch during lunchtime. It might have been on a digital display, normally used to inform students that they had to keep left in the corridor, but we still had live cricket. Progress for a school without a cricket team.
Two years, and after much persuasion to the PE Department, later we formed the rst cricket team the school had presented for several years. A humble state-school, we arrived at our closest public school with 6 cricketers, four footballers and someone whose father had ‘played a game for Lancashire 2nd’s. We got bowled out for thirty-seven and the opposition knocked it o 8 down. Not a complete write-o for our debut as an XI, but character building. Before we broke-up for summer we did manage to turn over the Grammar School, with the author taking ve wickets.
Returning to the 2005 Ashes - that series planted a seed in my head. Umpiring. I still cannot work out why panama hats, butchers’ coats and ties caused me to think ‘I want to do that’. I do not think the Careers Advisors did, either, when I proudly told them I wanted to be a cricket umpire aged 12.
I decided to give umpiring a go, eventually sitting my rst exams after my GCSE’s – because that is what every young person wants after a summer of exams, more of them.
I started o in the Lancashire Cricket League at 17, the youngest in the League’s impressive history and was appointed to my rst nal in the League still a teenager. Young, indeed – but this provided a useful grounding both in life and in cricket. Fast forward ten years and I am due to start my second season on the ECB National Panel of Umpires, standing in Minor Counties and County 2nd XI Cricket.
Throughout my journey up the o ciating ladder there has always been one constant – the people.
F
I genuinely think that more so than other sports, people make cricket. The XL Club is a good example of this.
A chance discovery of the XL Club whilst touring in Dubai soon led me to an associate membership and very quickly the Club, and what it stands for, had been sold to me. I have both played and umpired for the XL Club, and the similar theme recurs. The people.
Can you think of any better way of spending a Wednesday afternoon than with XL member Keith Roscoe on the Lancashire coast? It certainly beats working. For those who do not know who Keith Roscoe is, Google him.
As many of us prolong our playing careers thoughts of umpiring get pushed further back. There is nothing stopping you from doing both. For anyone who has stopped playing regularly, most of the learning is online and, if you’ve mileage left who knows where it might take you.
At 26 I have stood at many county grounds, and international stadia around the world, and umpired some of the best in the game - and all from the best seat in the house.
Perhaps there are some XL xtures against schools this year that might be the perfect opportunity to give a younger person the chance to stand in the middle and have a go.
You never know where it might take you.
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