/ 26 January 2007

Nerve-shredding creep of the fateful finger

Rudi Koertzen can’t talk right now. The golf course, he confesses, by way of explanation. A later time is quickly arranged, and he returns to his round. It was a brief first contact, but a telling one. The man widely credited as the best umpire in world cricket had left his cellphone on, presumably as a courtesy to all those who wanted to reach him; but the demands of etiquette, and the sanctity of club rules, were non-negotiable.

What emerges immediately when one speaks to Koertzen is that behind the easy-going, affable drawl is a figure with considerable natural authority and a deep respect for rules. Indeed, it was the lawbook that first drew him to umpiring. With a firm conviction that playing a sport well requires a thorough knowledge of the rules, the young Koertzen, a keen cricketer in Dispatch, was soon a highly impartial, if roundly condemned, umpire in club games.

”My mates weren’t that keen on my umpiring,” he recalls. ”They said I was too honest. We were all bowlers …” Wasn’t there just the slightest grain of sympathy for his fellow toilers? ”Not at all. I was brutally honest. When I played, I didn’t appeal if I didn’t think it was definitely out.” But, he confesses quickly, he may have got away with murder himself in other ways: ”I had a suspect action,” he chuckles.

By the early 1980s he had moved to Kimberley, and as his playing days wound to a close, a more formal approach to umpiring seemed the natural step. Having approached union president Don Lee about his desire to become an umpire, he was told he would need to sit an examination, despite his years spent denying his mates’ ill-gotten gains.

”I said I was qualified, but he said I had to write the A exam,” remembers Koertzen. ”So I wrote that exam, and I got 95%, and took up umpiring the next Saturday.”

His unflappable demeanour may have been evident from that Saturday onwards, but his trademark ”slow death” trigger finger took longer to evolve. ”I used to stand with my hands in front of me, and if I turned down an appeal I would fold my arms.

But the players weren’t happy about that, because they said every time I started lifting my hands, they thought I was about to give them out.”

Promotion to the panel of umpires standing in first-class matches brought with it further criticism, this time from a wife seeing her husband on television for the first time. ”She said I didn’t look good standing like that with my hands in front of me, so that’s when they went behind my back, and the finger went from there.”

He has no plans to change the nerve-shredding creep of the fateful finger, but adds that some television producers have hinted, no doubt with tongues firmly in cheek, that he might try a quick-draw version. ”They say they can’t get all of it in during the slow-mo replays.”

Two phrases feature constantly in the conversation: ”the guys” and ”focus on your job”. Clearly the players are as important to Koertzen as is his discipline, so how difficult is it to separate oneself from a contest of superstars and to keep one’s eye firmly on lines and angles; to ignore the magic of Shane Warne bowling two feet to one’s left and raising hell 22 yards away?

”It’s one of the hardest aspects of our job, but it’s just something you have to do,” says Koertzen. Fortunately for his reputation, the old brutal honesty and detachment have remained intact. I ask him if he ever shares the disappointment of a batsman who, having grafted a heroic 99, is trapped plumb in front and has to be given out.

”Only once in my whole career,” he says matter-of-factly. The man was Gerhardus Liebenberg, recalled one last time to face Pakistan in Cape Town. ”He hadn’t scored a run. There were a couple of wides, and then, when the guy got one on line, poor Gerhardus was in the way. I did feel sorry for the man. But that was the only time.”

Pivotal to the fortunes of the game, yet eternally aloof in his International Cricket Council-reinforced citadel at the non-striker’s end, an umpire can seem to the casual observer to be in an untouchable position, perhaps even a cushy one, safe from the savage pressures of the game. But modern cricket takes no prisoners. No potential advantage can afford to be left unexploited.

”There are teams that study umpires, just as they study the opposition,” explains Koertzen. ”And they’ll know, for example, whether you’re vulnerable at the beginning of the morning sessions, or perhaps in the late afternoon, after tea.

Once they identify a weak point, they’ll get to you by working on that weakness. And if you don’t stay strong mentally, you’re going to end up having an off day, the way batsmen do.”

Every umpire, says Koertzen, is keenly aware of the mistakes he’s made; but just in case he’s still a vague on some of the details of his hiccup, there will usually be a handful of helpful players within earshot to educate him.

”Once the over ends they’ll have a little chirp nearby. It’s not directed at you, but it’s meant for you to hear. And that’s when you’ve got to just shut off and say, ‘Okay, I got that one wrong’, and focus on the next ball.”

Is there a team he’d be comfortable naming as …? The Australians, he responds at once, with a refreshing lack of diplomatic waffle: the world champions, he says, come harder at umpires than any other team. But even Ricky Ponting’s notoriously blunt charges don’t push Koertzen too far.

”I am very lucky that I get on well with all the current players,” he says. ”I have a rapport with them, and once you have that respect, your job is 70% easier.”

And so to the future, in which milestones loom: with 80 Tests and over 150 one-day internationals under his belt, Koertzen says the idea of notching up a century and a double-century respectively is hugely appealing, as is standing in the World Cup final; perhaps another three years. But he’s happy to play it by ear.

”I’d like to keep doing this for as long as I still enjoy it,” he says. ”Or perhaps I should say, for as long as the players are still happy to see Rudi on the ground.”

So far, there aren’t a lot of complaints.