5 funny on-field incidents involving umpires
Matthew Hayden and umpire Billy Bowden hit the deckUmpiring is one of the most difficult and tedious jobs to perform on the cricket field. Despite the amount of seriousness attached to the role, most umpires ensure that they keep the atmosphere as light as possible by getting involved in humour and friendly interactions with players.There have been quite a few funny instances on the cricket which have featured umpires in a prominent role. While some of these incidents were pretty intentional, others just happened in the spur of the moment.Although there have been several occasions where umpires have made us laugh, we have picked 5 out of them.
#1 Umpire Billy Bowden shows Glenn McGrath a red card
Kiwi umpire Billy Bowden is an absolute master of on-field comedy and there are too many instances of him having fun on the cricket pitch and making others laugh too. One such instance came in the first ever T20I played between Australia and New Zealand.
New Zealand were completely out of the contest and needed too many to win off the last ball. Glenn McGrath, who was bowling the final over, decided to bring some more fun to the proceedings and tried to emulate the infamous underarm delivery by Trevor Chappell.
Before he could deliver the ball, Bowden rushed forward to stop McGrath, pulled out a red card and showed it to the bowler in his usual theatrical manner. McGrath too, was seen shrugging his shoulders pretending to be disgusted while he had a smile about the umpire’s actions.