Faheem Ashraf, who plays for the Pakistan team, has made a staggering disclosure while in the midst of the Champions Cup. He accepts that players in the domestic circuit tend to come to terms with the umpires and even go to the extent of exchanging phone numbers.
Referring to the order of the match officials in Pakistan’s active cricketing circles, Ashraf, who has appeared in 17 Tests and is plying his trade at the dolphins in the champions cup hinted that no good umpires remain in the domestic leagues of Pakistan.
“All the good umpires in Pakistan are gone (umpiring at higher level) from domestic cricket,” he replied to the poor standard of umpiring in the ongoing one day tournament in the country, which sprinkled all respect for this match area.
“Umpiring in domestic cricket is also like this (poor) but because there is no TV coverage, no one has the idea. . . Now everybody knows at what level ugly or good umpires are in Pakistan in one way or another out there. . . Those who are appointing them have to see now who should be umpiring at which level it’s not what most of these women think or assume,” said Ashraf.
The right-arm medium-pacer, who bats left-handed, went on to reveal that favours are exchanged between players and umpires in domestic cricket.
It would seem that these players are in collusion with the umpires, and so they are either spared or umpires take their (phone) numbers. I am not afraid of saying it to the face,’ he said.
“Whereas, here (in the champions cup) there is no such friendship at all, as everything is on the (tv) screen and everyone is looking at it,” said the 30-year-old all-rounder who has played 34 ODIs and 48 T20Is.
