Making the Call - Round 1
I would firstly like to thank you all for choosing to be a community cricket umpire in Metropolitan Junior Community Cricket (MJCC) for the 2026/27 season. Umpires play a very important role in cricket by ensuring that the game is played in accordance with the laws of cricket, local playing conditions as well as the spirit of cricket.
For those umpires that umpired in the MJCC last year, welcome back!
For those of you about to start umpiring in MJCC matches for the first time, welcome and I hope that you enjoy the challenges associated with umpiring cricket and enjoy the season ahead.
As I have done for the past two seasons, each week I will put together some notes on a cricket umpiring topic that will hopefully help you with your umpiring. For those of you that umpired last season, many of the topics will be familiar, but can still hopefully be useful to you as a form of revision.
I have umpired Premier cricket grade matches for several years and will again be umpiring Premier cricket matches on Saturdays this season.
If you have any questions about the laws of cricket or playing conditions or you encounter any issues whilst umpiring, please address any issues to the WA Cricket competition Admin email address: comp.admin@wacricket.com.au. They will let me know if there are issues being raised that I need to respond to and I will provide you with some advice and may also address the issue/s in some of my weekly umpiring messages.
Once again, WA Cricket will be appointing umpires to matches so if you have any issues about appointments, please contact the team at WA Cricket : comp.admin@wacricket.com.au.
Umpiring in community cricket is about developing good umpiring skills and routines that will help you to be the best umpire that you can be. My commitment is to try to help all of you to develop your umpiring skills so that you can be the best umpire that you can be.
Umpiring can be a challenging job at times, especially at the start when umpires are more likely to make errors as they develop their umpiring skills. When it comes to umpiring, I have a few phrases that I often use, which are:
A mistake is only a disaster if you don’t learn from it.
Everyone makes mistakes when they first start umpiring.
The most important ball is the next one.
This week, I will keep my message simple:
Make sure you are familiar with the laws of cricket and also the playing conditions in the competition that you are umpiring. The playing conditions are very important as they will often override the laws of cricket. The playing conditions for community cricket can be found here. It is a good idea to have a copy of the playing conditions in your bag. Another good idea is to highlight key parts of the playing conditions (If you ever have a situation where you need to check the playing conditions, if a coach sees that you have highlighted parts of the playing conditions, they will realise that you have read them and that will create a good impression)
Be confident.
Remember that everyone makes mistakes from time to time. During a game, if you think that you may have made a mistake, try not to think about it too much. (I know this is not always easy) and focus on the next ball!
Make sure you have a ball counter and everything else you need for umpiring organised the night before your game so that you are ready to go the next day.
Make sure you get to the ground at least 30 minutes before the start of play to allow yourself time to introduce yourself to the coaches and the scorers and to deal with any issues that might occur.
At the end of each game review your performance and think about what you did well and what you could have done better. Think about situations that you could have handled better and work out what you could have done to deal with it more effectively. This way, you can be better prepared if it happens in another match. If you do this well, you will be a better umpire at the end of each game than what you were at the start of that game.
I don’t expect umpires to get every decision correct, but I do expect that umpires will do their best to try to get the decisions right.
For those of you about to umpire your first game, it is natural to be a bit nervous before your first game, but if you do your best and learn from each game, it will get easier an you will be less nervous as time goes on.
I hope that you all enjoy umpiring and wish you all the very best for the season ahead.
Good luck with Round 1 and I hope that you all go well on the weekend!
Paul Henwood
MJCC Umpiring Coach