Association of Cricket Officials Issue 27 | Page 14

ECB ACO National
Conference
Late October saw 320 umpires and
scorers descend on Lord’s for the
biennial ECB ACO National Conference.
The format was similar to previous
years, with opportunities for attendees
to go on tours of Lord’s, test their LBW
decisions against the Hawk-Eye
software, and attend a number of
educational sessions related to
umpiring and scoring. This year, we
were also lucky enough to welcome
two cricketing celebrities to deliver
talks to the Conference – ex England
spinner and current Glamorgan coach
Robert Croft, and ex Sussex cricketer
and MCC President John Barclay. We
asked some of those in attendance to
give their view of the day’s activities.
Matti Watton on Stuart Cummings
Stuart Cummings has brought his
experience of reaching the highest
echelons of rugby league refereeing
and of working with a range of
sporting bodies to his role as one of
ECB’s Cricket Liaison Officers, playing a
key role in supporting umpires in
County Championship matches.
Stuart outlined how his rugby league
officiating career had progressed not
simply by virtue of his performances,
but sometimes through being in the
right place at the right time. Going to a
top match as a spectator and having a
couple of pre-match beers, only to find
yourself refereeing because the
appointee hadn’t turned up, wouldn’t
feature in many officiating pathways.
The main part of Stuart’s presentation
outlined the approach and mentality
required to reach an elite level of
officiating, regardless of the sport.
Some of the themes, such as the
importance of good preparation and
aiming to be respected rather than
liked, were well worth covering, but
probably familiar ground for many.
However, his emphasis on assessing
your own character and actively
developing the necessary mental
strength to survive the inevitable
difficult moments may well have felt
like lesser known territory.
A key theme was dealing with pressure,
with several fine examples shown, such
as recent overturned decisions in the
Bangladesh Tests and a day of county
cricket where the ball appeared to do
little except hit the batsmen on the
pads. Particularly interesting was the
measurement of the heart rate of a
third umpire during a televised T20
match. As expected, it increased when

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decisions were called for, but it was
high throughout; food for thought next
time you shout from the sofa that a
referral decision is obvious and they
should be getting on with it.

nervous energy. I capture his spirit for,
like a rejuvenated schoolboy, the
chance to go out on the balcony to
imagine the applause was just too good
to resist!

Managing players and coaches is
another vital officiating skill, and
Stuart’s rugby examples were highly
pertinent. The story of the coach whom
he got on the wrong side of on more
than one occasion, but who admitted
that he looked for someone to blame
to make his employers think better of
him, and with whom Stuart is now
good friends, has valuable lessons for
us all. And if next season you have a
challenging player management issue,
type ‘Kelvin Skerrett is Superman’ into
YouTube and put yourself in Stuart’s
shoes in a match in the mid-1990s.
Watching those players from the
stands as I regularly did at that time
was intimidating enough.

Ladies and gents…the tour is now
finished. All too quickly the spell is
broken!

John Sayce on the Tour of Lord’s

Being an avid cricket spectator from
international to local level for over 40
years, I have obviously seen Robert in
his national and county role. He has
always struck me as a ‘team player’
and not flamboyant, looking for ‘media
stardom’, but just a good, honest,
give-it-all talented cricketer. Not to be
disappointed, he comes over as exactly
that when he gives a humorous candid
view of his period as an international
and county player. I thought the way
Robert gave an honest appraisal of his
views on officials in his era as a player
and now a county coach was
straightforward, which brought no
surprises from my own thoughts on the
guy. He is pragmatic and a realist as to
his own playing abilities and that of his
team in Glamorgan, with a view on
motivation and psychology of how to
get the maximum out of the team and
each individual player. His stories on
tour and the moral of a story of the
consequences of when you play tricks
on your county coach, who
subsequen