Vin­ode Mam­chan

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go's Um­pires Coun­cil Lal­man Kow­lessar has con­demned com­ments made by man­ag­er of Pre­mier League team Lluma Es­mer­al­da, Rafi Ali, which sug­gest­ed that they have been un­fa­vor­ably treat­ed by match of­fi­cials in their de­but sea­son at the high­est lev­el of the lo­cal game. Kow­lessar, who is al­so first vice pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board, said he flat­ly dis­agreed with Ali who he claimed was of the opin­ion that there was a clique of um­pires work­ing to­geth­er to en­sure cer­tain teams win in the Pre­mier League. "Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. I be­lieve that this gen­tle­man shows all the qual­i­ties of a sore los­er and is try­ing to blame oth­ers for the short­com­ings of his own team," said Kow­lessar. He said as pres­i­dent of the T&TUC he stood solid­ly be­hind and strong­ly sup­port­ed the um­pires who he de­scribed as do­ing a fan­tas­tic job to up­hold the laws of the game with­out recog­ni­tion.

"It is a very stress­ful job and like any oth­er per­son in a pres­sure sit­u­a­tion, mis­takes will be made be­cause we are all hu­man. But to re­mote­ly sug­gest that um­pires are tak­ing sides while of­fi­ci­at­ing is lu­di­crous," said Kow­lessar, a re­tired Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas his­to­ry mas­ter and school team crick­et coach. "It was even sug­gest­ed that um­pires are be­ing bribed but our own in­ves­ti­ga­tions have shown that the ac­cu­sa­tions are not true. In fact we com­mend one um­pire who lit­er­al­ly chased of­fi­cials from a cer­tain club who went to his house to get him to make cer­tain de­ci­sions in a match," said Kow­lessar. He said af­ter serv­ing the game for more than four decades he was pained to hear of the com­ments made by Ali which he sug­gest­ed was do­ing a great dis­ser­vice to um­pires and the fu­ture con­duct of the game.

Kow­lessar called for some mea­sure of disclip­inary ac­tion to be tak­en against Ali and said he has been ap­proached by some of his mem­bers to take uni­lat­er­al sanc­tions to protest the Es­mer­al­da man­ag­er's un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed crit­i­cisms. The top um­pires' of­fi­cial said he has full con­fi­dence in his mem­bers and de­cried the im­age most peo­ple have for the of­fi­cials as be­ing for­mer crick­eters who re­main in the game af­ter their play­ing days are over. Kow­lessar said it was stretch­ing the imag­i­na­tion some­what when an of­fi­cial can sit over­look­ing mid­wick­et and de­ter­mine that a bats­man is out Leg Be­fore Wick­et. He re­vealed that the T&TUC has em­barked on a pro­gramme to re­cruit more um­pires es­pe­cial­ly in the Un­der-35 age group and are ed­u­cat­ing their mem­ber­ship to keep up with the high­est stan­dards of the game and the rapid­ly evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy. He said the lev­el of of­fi­ci­at­ing in the re­cent Pre­mier­ship T20 Fes­ti­val at Guaracara Park in Pointe-a-Pierre was of the high­est stan­dard and um­pires can hold their head high and take their place among their col­leagues any­where in the world. Kow­lessar al­so dis­pelled sug­ges­tions that um­pires on du­ty at the T20 Fes­ti­val were not prop­er­ly qual­i­fied. "All um­pires were vet­ted by the Um­pires Coun­cil and were more than qual­i­fied to take their place in the mid­dle," said Kow­lessar.