To recognize most sports people, it is necessary to catch at least a glimpse of face or number. With umpire David Shepherd, who died of cancer at 68, the England and Wales Cricket Board said Wednesday, all you needed was the silhouette. Nobody else in cricket had quite that bulk or rotundity, topped with a silvery shock of hair.
If any doubt remained, you needed only wait until 111 — or some multiple of it — appeared on the scoreboard. A “Nelson,” named after the British admiral, is widely believed in cricket to be an unlucky number.
The superstition had no more devout follower than Shepherd, who sought to ward off ill fortune by keeping one foot off the ground for as long as the fateful number remained. Spectators were treated to the sight of his bulky white-coated figure perched delicately on one leg, or shifting rapidly from one to another.
That whimsy should not detract from his excellence as an umpire. Shepherd had been a moderate cricketer. He was a robust striker of the ball and a better fielder than his build suggested — he also played both rugby and soccer to a reasonable level — but averaged only in the middle 20s in a career in English county cricket with Gloucestershire.
He found his true métier as an umpire, joining the English county list in 1981 and rising to take charge of international matches within two years. It is not enough to make the right decisions. The good umpire has also to earn the trust of players. Shepherd did both.
He was not infallible. A series of errors in an England-Pakistan test in 2001 so upset him that he contemplated quitting. A highly questionable call against Pakistan’s best batsman, Inzamam Ulhaq, effectively ended the 1999 World Cup final as a contest.
But the good days outnumbered the bad, and nobody ever doubted Shepherd’s contention that “I never made a dishonest decision.”
As his fellow west-countryman David Foot wrote, he had “the advantage of an equable temperament.”
“The undeniable fact is that most top-class cricketers like him,” he wrote.
Those qualities earned him appointment to 172 one-day internationals, including three World Cup finals, and 92 tests, third on both all-time lists.
His career saw international umpiring change profoundly, but he adjusted with equanimity — becoming a member of the International Cricket Council’s globetrotting elite panel of umpires and accepting that technological second-guessing had a role, although he feared that the job might eventually be reduced to counting the six balls in an over.
That he stayed at the top until statutory retirement age reflected both mental and physical fitness. The bulk reflected hearty appetites rather than sloth. He was in every sense a substantial figure.
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