Daryl Harper - Goodbye and good riddance

Not all of our Cricket Zeroes are players...

Umpiring is a difficult job at any level of cricket. But it is downright impossible when you are as deaf, dumb and blind as Daryl Harper.

Despite a trail of blunders, which if depicted on embroidered cloth would be longer than the Bayeux Tapestry, Harper incredibly stood in 94 test matches and 174 one day internationals, and has only today been mercifully removed from the ICC elite list of umpires. Halle-bloody-lujah!

Harper reached the nadir of his ineptitude during the South Africa-England test series early in 2010 when he managed to both make and break the case for the UDRS. When making decisions in the middle, Harper seemed to be part of a secret ICC plot to justify the review system such were the sheer number and utter ineptness of his quite dreadful decisions that were overturned by the TV umpire. Then when he took his turn in the TV umpire's chair, Harper forgot to turn up the volume so missed the audible edge from Graeme Smith's bat in the final test of the series at The Wanderers.

Daryl Harper. Probably the worst umpire in the world. Goodbye and good riddance.

Where next?

1st Test: Cardiff - Preview: England reach for the feel good hit of summer

Cricket Zeroes: Billy Bowden

Cricket Zeroes: Charles Colville

Check out all our other Reverse Sweep heroes and zeroes

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Comments

[Ian Ashworth]

Couldn't agree more with this post except in one point - the use of "probably" in the last sentence.

[Cricket Burble]

On the Graeme Smith incident, the broadcaster didn't have the sound up which meant Harper was considered blameless by the ICC (http://cricketburble.blogspot.com/2010/08/after-6-months-icc-confirms-what-we.html).

But ignoring the fact that the ICC should have been checking the sound feed rather than relying on a broadcaster, Harper himself surely would have been confused as to why there was no sound prior to the ball he was asked to adjudicate on? That's the bit that puzzles me....why didn't he ask a technician to come in and fix the issue within the first over....it must have been very obvious there was a problem with the sound when he couldn't hear the batsman shuffling around in their crease or comments from fielders.

[The Reverse Sweep]

It was perhaps a it injudicious of me Cricket Burble to blame Harper for the sound not being tured up, though as you said surely he should have noticed!

[pandora]

You, probably, were mistaken?