Saturday, 03 Oct, Aleem Dar, who was adjudged the ICC Umpire of the Year on Thursday night, attributed his success to maintaining a very high standard in the profession he took up after a modest first-class playing career.
‘Indeed it’s a great honour for Pakistan because what I’m today is because of the country I love and represent. I feel very proud to be a Pakistani at this moment. It’s a just reward for all the hard work put into the job,’ the 41-year-old Aleem told Dawn in an interview from Johannesburg.
‘I would like to offer my sincere gratitude to the ICC and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) as well as my friends, family and my wife for encouraging me throughout since I was elevated to the ICC’s Elite Panel of umpires in 2004.’ Aleem, who received the award from the ICC Chief Executive Haroon Lorgat, ended a five-year stranglehold that his great friend from Australia, Simon Taufel, held on the prestigious award bestowed upon on the best performing individual in various categories by the International Cricket Council (ICC) since the game’s governing body started the annual trend in 2004.
Aleem beat off strong challenge from Taufel, New Zealand’s Tony Hill and his fellow Pakistani Asad Rauf in the voting to this award by the skippers of 10 current Test-playing nations and the eight-man Elite Panel of ICC match referees.
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| ‘I don’t allow the pressure to get to me. As a person, I try to remain as calm as possible while making sure I’m not ruffled by anything on the field.’ -Photo by AP Cricket |
The criteria for nomination was based on decision statistics over the past 12 months (between Aug 13, 2008 to Aug 24, 2009) during which Aleem supervised in seven Tests, eight One-day Internationals and the World Twenty20 Championship in England last June.
Born in Jhang on June 6, 1968, Aleem played just 17 matches for various local outfits in a 11-year first-class cricket record as a middle-order batsman and leg-spinner before deciding his future lay elsewhere and took up umpiring the following season in 1998-99.
Aleem, who has thus far stood in 57 Tests and 119 ODIs plus six Twenty20 Internationals, has never had the chance to officiate in Test matches played by Pakistan although he has been supervising in occasional one-dayers when Pakistan play in home series.‘It’s something I miss [not standing in Pakistan Tests] but that is obviously beyond me because of the ICC policy of having ‘third country’ umpires officiating in a Test between two particular countries,’ Aleem said.‘Had I become an international umpire in the 1990s or even the early period of this decade, I might have stood in some of the Tests played by Pakistan!’
When asked to explain his ‘good work’ on the field, Aleem said he had to adopt a calm approach to achieve his goals.
‘I don’t allow the pressure to get to me. As a person, I try to remain as calm as possible while making sure I’m not ruffled by anything on the field. As an umpire, it’s imperative that you concentrate hard all the time and stay cool as well. That way, one tends to make lesser mistakes than others.
‘It’s not an easy job [umpiring] in this modern age where technology checks your progress all the way through television replays from various angles. It’s not humanly possible not to commit errors here and there. However at least one should try to learn from this and try not to repeat the same [mistakes] again,’ Aleem noted.
Aleem remembers the time when the ICC punished him along with now retired West Indian umpire Steve Buckner, Rudi Koertzen of South Africa, New Zealand’s Billy Bowden and match referee Jeff Crowe of New Zealand after their combined mistakes led to the 2007 World Cup final between Australia and Sri Lanka in Bridgetown finishing amid farcical scenes of near-darkness.
‘Yeah, it was a bleak moment for all the officials involved. In hindsight, we regretted what happened then. The ICC punished all of us by suspending the officials standing in the [inaugural] World Twenty20 Championship in South Africa. But it was something not committed intentionally,’ Aleem concluded. -
Courtesy The Dawn
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