Tym Glaser, Associate Editor - Sports

You can milk just about anything with nipples. - Greg Focker (Ben Stiller).
I have nipples Greg, could you milk me? - Jack Byrnes (Robert DeNiro).
Meet The Parents (2000)

AS FAR as male nipples go, has there ever been anything ever created less useful?

I suppose the Big Fella Up There had to put something on men's upper torsos to break up the monotony but, really, what's the use?

And don't get me started on the appendix, whose sole purpose seems to be to explode.

Useless, I tell ya, useless. Still, good people, I have discovered something almost as wutless as these body parts and it comes in the full human form known as Test umpires.

Sure, back in the day Before TV (BTV), they served a purpose as someone had to arbitrate cricket matches and, due to a dearth of those boxes with moving pictures inside, there was no real way of telling how bad they really were.

However, now, in the modern days, we have replays from all angles and, with the odd exception, they are being exposed as terrible - and no player is exempt.

Just in the past month and a half, the top three batsmen in the world have been given out to absolutely shocking decisions.

First, Sri Lanka's big bat, Kumar Sangakkara, was hammering Australia from pillar to post in a fantastic rearguard action in the second Hobart Test when, on 192, a Stuart Clark short ball clipped nothing but shoulder and he was 'caught' by Ricky Ponting.

At Port Elizabeth, South Africa's star, Jacques Kallis, was trying to bail his side out of peril against the upstart West Indies in the first Test of this series when he too was clearly hit on the shoulder but was 'caught' behind while well set on 85. Goodbye Kallis, goodbye Test.

To complete the hat-trick, Australia's captain, Ponting, was cruising along on 55 in the first innings of the current Test against India in Sydney when he hit a ball from his nemesis, Harbhajan Singh, on to his pad and was adjudged leg before.

To be frank, Ponting was out about 40 runs before that when he was clearly caught behind but the ump didn't see or hear that either ... but do two wrongs now make a right?

Caught behind

And let's not even get into Andrew Symonds' knock in the same innings where he went on to make an undefeated 162 after being caught behind and stumped before he'd even reached 50. If the apparently deaf and blind man in the white coat at the other end had given him out on either occasion, India could be well on their way to levelling a key Test series.

Symonds admitted he'd nicked the ball but said he was not going to walk because the good and bad decisions even out over time.

Hmmm, do they 'Roy'?

Go ask Wavell Hinds how everything ends with the ledger balanced.

Remember when Hinds was the next big thing in West Indies cricket in 2000? He hammered Pakistan in the final home Test with scores of 165 and 52 and great things were expected of the Jamaican bat when the team followed that series with a trip to England.

Then, the umps struck. A string of horrid caught at the wicket decisions went against him in the England Tests. He lost form, finished the series with an average of 16.33 and was never quite the same batsman after that.

Yes, flaws in his technique were exposed but there have been plenty of players with kinks who still made lots of runs. What if he had turned some of those early innings in England into big scores and maintained his roll? We could be talking about a completely different Hinds.

Technology has well and truly passed umpires now and their wrong decisions are cruelly exposed for all and sundry to see. International cricket is a fully professional venture and these errors can cost teams money and players their livelihoods.

Don't give me that bunkum about "the glorious uncertainty of the game" and how "it all evens out".

Itchy fingers

If we expect the players to act like professionals, they should not have their careers rely on the fickleness of fate or one man's itchy finger.

Let's give the batsman the right to appeal when he feels he has been wrongly dismissed. Let's give the third umpire the right to over-rule the on-field decisions of his workmates (except leg befores).

Yeah, this will all take a bit more time but, in case you didn't notice, Test matches are scheduled for five days!

If all his undermines the umpires' authority, so what? Is that worse than them having to endure watching replays on big screens of their cock-ups while the crowd jeers.

What's so wrong about getting it right?

Baseball suffers from the same malaise as cricket. They are both games built on history and stats and are apparently happy to live in the past and pretend that TV and its replays are a passing fad.

Wake up, guys. It's the 21st century now, let the past go and step into this brave new world which also has a machine which cooks food real fast, an eensy-weensy little device which plays music just like your stereo and, get this, a box which can send messages all over the world through a thing called 'internet' - and you don't even have to buy a stamp. Wow.

Well, enough of my little rant now, I think I'll go out and get my nipple pierced.

Later.

Feedback: tym.glaser@gleanerjm.com.