by Abhishek Mukherjee
Frank Chester was talented enough to earn his Worcestershire cap at 16. Contemporaries were impressed by him. Hobbs, in particular, was very optimistic: "I played against him in his brief career and am sure he would have been a great England all-rounder."
But Chester was hit by shrapnel in Greece, and his gangrenous right arm had to be amputated from the elbow.
Giving up cricket was, of course, out of the question. Encouraged by Plum Warner, he took up umpiring, and stood in a First-Class match at 26. Just before his debut, he picked up six small pebbles from his mother’s garden at Bushey. The pebbles would remain his companion throughout his career as he would use them to announce "over".
He ruled both captains out on debut: Johnny Douglas, LBW, and John Daniell, stumped. Colleague Harry Butt, thirty years senior to Chester, was worried: "Boy, you won’t last long as an umpire … If you give skippers out, you sign your death warrant." Chester refused to budge.
At Northampton that season they did not believe he was a County umpire: "You’ve made a mistake. This is a First-Class match."
Two years later he walked out for his Test debut, at Lord's, no less. His trilby hat, and the dark leather glove that covered the wooden stump of his hand, would attain cult status over time. At 29, he was the youngest to officiate in a Test in the period between 1896 and 1965.
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How good was Chester? Let us recall an incident from the Trent Bridge, 1938, that come-and-look-at-this-You-will-never-see-the-like-of-this-again Test.
Sinfield was bowling to Bradman. The ball very faintly touched the inside edge, hit the pad, went over the stumps and was caught by Ames "amidst a jumble of feet, pads and bat". Bradman overbalanced, Ames whipped off the bails, and appealed Emmott Robinson (*the* Emmott Robinson).
Not out, was the verdict. A desperate Ames now turned to Chester at the other end.
Chester nonchalantly responded with "out, caught," and turned his back on the scene.
Years later, Bradman would remember this as "one of those remarkable pieces of judgment upon which I base my opinion that Chester was the greatest of all umpires."
It is difficult to gauge umpires before the television replay era, but eye-witnesses agree that they have not seen a greater umpire. Let us see.
Swanton: "As nearly infallible as a man could be in his profession".
Hardstaff Sr: "One of the outstanding Test umpires of all time."
Hobbs: "As an umpire, he was right on top."
Wisden (Viv Jenkins): "His eyes are his most striking feature, quick, alive, ever ready to pounce on the unusual. In another sphere he might have made his mark in the C.I.D.".
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There were also the idiosyncrasies. Chester never believed in giving the batsman the benefit of doubt. The logic was simple: "There never should be any doubt".
He often showing disdain towards overly optimistic appeals. Legend goes that he once silenced "a very famous bowler" in a Lord’s Test with "not out, and that was a very bad appeal."
He never hesitated to crack jokes about that arm: "When the stump begins to ache, rain is almost invariably on the way." This often led to queries of "is the arm-aching today, Frank?"
At Hove in 1932, a hard-hit straight drive knocked his stump off the socket and carried it some distance towards the boundary. Poor Chester had to collect it and leave the ground to reattach it.
At Trent Bridge Test in 1950, Ramadhin bowled Insole off his pads, but Chester was adamant that Insole was leg-before, not bowled, as he had given Insole out *in the brief time period between the ball hitting the pad and the stumps*. He fought so hard over this that scorecards show Insole as leg-before till today.
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The decline came swiftly, after World War II, when ulcers left him perennially irritable. By 1953 he was well past his prime, and he never stood in an Ashes Test after the season.
But even on that tour he had one hurrah, during a tour match. Chester turned down an appeal for leg-before by a youngster called Richie Benaud against an Oxford undergraduate called Colin Cowdrey.
Benaud later remembered that he "wasn't certain how umpire Chester could possibly have given it not out." But wicketkeeper Langley, who stood closer to the batsman, explained the "brilliant decision" later: "Just the faintest inside edge."
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Chester was the first major umpire to start stooping low behind the stumps as the bowler ran in. The practice was subsequently followed across the world.
He stood in 48 Tests – a world record that stood till 1992. The 774 First-Class matches remain a world record by a margin of 73.
Frank Chester, probably the greatest umpire of all time, was born on Jan 20, 1895.