Visitor's Evening on 18th March 2010
The club was delighted to invite a large number of visitors to the weekly meeting which was held on Thursday 18th March 2010.
Visitors were able to experience a normal club meeting and to hear about the club's current projects.
The special guest was Rochdale’s International Cricket umpire John Holder who reflected on a life as ‘Pokerface Benson’-on the day before his 65th birthday
Thursday’s welcoming evening at Rochdale Rotary Club saw 50 Rotarians,potential new members and guests giving a huge welcome to Rochdale’s very own International umpire John Holder.
John came to talk about his early life in the town of Superlative in Barbados coming to Rochdale via the College getting Rochdale citizenship , later played cricket as a lively bowler for Hampshire.Playing career was cut short by injury but another career as an umpire came along;his unflappable calm personality helped him to become a highly respected County,Test match and Lancashire league umpire.
He became known as Benson after the calm straight talking butler in the American TV series of the early 1980s looking after a dysfunctional family-rather like hotheaded cricketers!.With John Hampshire another Lancashire ex-cricketer he went to become first neutral umpire to officiate games between Pakistan and India.These games had previously been unsavoury contests between players fuelled by local umpires afraid to make decisions going against their own national team.All went so well that the neutral umpire became the norm for internationals
Another Highlight was working with other top umpires like Dicky Bird- John was the calm contrast with Dickie’s highly strung personality.He had the privilege to witness Shane Warne and other talented players at close quarters.
Cricket has become much bigger and the rewards for winning much greater in the modern era.John described the difficulty umpires have with the changing nature of cricket nowadays –winning is the motivation and players make appeals and pressurise umpires much more.Camera replays have helped and the use of new technology cameras has made it less likely umpires will give batsmen the benefit of the doubt. This Decision review System has problems but John feels it will help the umpires and improve fairness. However there are still some difficulties particularly with use of Hawkeye to predict whether ball would have hit the stumps after hitting batsman’s pads.Even so the umpire is still the final arbiter
Umpire John was celebrating his 65th birthday the day after and has now retired but has produced a book on Umpiring with the Illustrator Paul Trevillion-’YOU ARE THE UMPIRE!’.Also he will be continuing to mentor new umpires in his new role for the ICC as one of 5 mentors worldwide and is continuing to travel to Europe,the Americas and Caribbean to contribute to a game that has always been part of his life.
Rotary members and visitors were amused by stories of the day a cricket match had two tea intervals ; ‘umpires should look unemotional otherwise the players will try to work you up all the time’;’65 was only made the retirement age because of a certain ‘difficult’ umpire who threatened to go on to age 70.
Rotarian Neil Helliwell an avid cricket fan gave John Holder the club’s best wishes in his new career as author , mentor and speaker!