MCC cure for umpiring ills

By Ted Corbett

COLOMBO, MARCH 13. MCC, the 200-year-old members club which used to run cricket but which has stepped into the shadows in recent years, has offered a long-term solution to the umpiring controversy that has blighted the two Sri Lanka-England Tests this month and given the game's lawmakers a new headache to add to the match-fixing scam.

The club has informed the International Cricket Council, the world governing body, that it is willing to run a World Umpires Academy which will aim to improve the standard of umpiring in Tests and one-day Internationals. ``We have a good reputation around the world, we are highly regarded outside England and we feel that our name will attract a sponsor,'' said Tony Lewis, the former England captain who has been president of MCC for the past three years.

Lewis said he had presented the idea to Lord MacLaurin, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, recently. ``I got a good reception from him and I hope that in his talks with ICC in its role as the world governing body he will put forward our idea. It is a long-term view, of course, but we feel that it requires only a small extension of our role as guardian of the laws to allow us to look after umpires as well. Our status as an independent body, outside the day-to-day running of the game, will make us acceptable around the world where our name is often seen as synonymous with English cricket. That is an old-fashioned view and it is a long time since we played a leading role in cricket administration but we feel we can be helpful.''

Lewis visualises an Academy at Lord's, the MCC headquarters as well as the symbolic headquarters of cricket, for selected umpires from the 10 Test-playing nations. ``We would want to play a part in selecting the umpires who are to attend the course, and of course, there is the question of finance to be sorted out,'' he said. ``We would be trying to raise the standard of the top umpires. We feel the idea has merit and we want to begin a wide- ranging debate.''

The role of MCC changed dramatically in the second half of the 20th century after it handed the professional game to the Test and County Cricket Board, now redefined as the England and Wales Cricket Board or ECB, in 1967. Its committees - comprising the game's high and mighty - picked touring squads, revised the laws, acted as host to touring teams, and operated as the conscience of the game at every level.

Now it has only two important roles: the control of Lord's and the revision of the laws, a duty it has just completed for the first time in 20 years.

The club evolved from the White Conduit Club in 1787 when Thomas Lord laid out his first ground in Dorset Square, London, and a year later its first code of laws was adopted. It gradually took charge of the game worldwide, and until seven years ago, acted as the secretariat for ICC. The Queen is its patron and on a Test day in June you can meet Cabinet Ministers, the country's most famous authors, pop singers like the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger and Charlie Watt, and Tim Rice, the lyric writer of Evita and Cats, all dressed in their red and gold MCC ties and all enjoying one of the main days of what is left of the traditional London season.

The club still owns Lord's, scene of two Tests a year, and the big knock-out finals and describes itself as ``a private club with a public function.'' Yet, for all its old roots, the club still has a modern outlook and been praised for the imaginative architecture that has transformed the ground in the last 10 years and its initiative in sending artists with the England touring side to capture the great moments on canvas. ``I know we are often thought of as being beyond our sell-by date, but I feel we still have something to offer,'' said Lewis.

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