The umpiring in the New Zealand semi-final was poor, but things are much better than they used to be.

The umpire today is less policeman or headmaster, more executioner. The ball stuns the guilty pad or whizzes past the hanging bat, and then the bowler and fielders roar in unison, a mad mob, without pity or mercy, demanding death.

Then the television screen frames the umpire. Waist to head, we have our picture. Modifying the gestures of a Roman Emperor deciding the fate of a gladiator, an index finger pointed to the heavens indicates death. If he wishes to spare the batsman, he shakes his head and glares displeasure at the overexcited bowler.

He is a grim figure, the modern umpire, yet favourable to the old days when umpires interpreted their role somewhere between puppet and clown. These men in white coats seemed at times to be proselytising for the theatre of the absurd.

In Pakistan’s first home series against India, the Indians were victims of one horrendously biased decision after the other. They became so incensed and angry they eventually reached a point of near delirium: when they appealed when it was clearly out, and the Pakistani umpire gave it not out, they’d just laugh. There was no other response.

A photo taken from that series showed our captain, A.H. Kardar, half way down the track scampering for a run at the moment the stumps were broken by the fielding team. It was given not out.

Mike Brearley tells a story from when he was England Under-25 captain in Dacca in 1967. Rain stopped play but the weather soon cleared up and the pitch was clearly fit to play on. England were bowling and were on top of the game, so obviously they were eager to continue. But the umpires had a different idea, spurred by their concern for the bowlers: what if they slipped? Brearley said, 'Er, thanks, but I’ll be responsible for that.' But then the umpires turned around and said they also feared for the batsmen. Brearley, dumbfounded, said that surely the batsmen can wear spikes. ‘But some of them don’t have spikes,’ came the response. And that was that, end of discussion. So this cricket match in front of 40,000 people and at a crucial stage was stopped because the umpires decided an international team did not have proper shoes.

This sort of bias inevitably made some teams very sensitive. Against New Zealand in 1976 Imran Khan asked the umpire, as he was perfectly entiteld to do, to stand slightly back from the stumps. What he wasn't entitled to do, apparently, was ask the umpire in Urdu, which happened to be both his and the umpire's native language. The non-striker Kiwi batsman suspected foul play and insisted they speak in English.

However, it wasn't just our umpires. Javed Miandad, on the 1979 tour to India, was so scared of the ball even touching his pads - the Indian umpires were giving the Pakistanis out for anything - that he had to get himself in the practice of not allowing the ball to touch his pads at all. He therefore stopped wearing pads in the nets. Must have been painful, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

I mentioned the Kardar run-out above, but those who followed the brilliant 1992 Test series against England will remember a similarly disgraceful not-out run-out decision. Graham Gooch, at a crucial stage in the only Test Pakistan lost, was miles out, as confirmed by TV replays, yet the English umpire somehow saw things differently.

In our first tour to India, in the Mumbai (then Bombay) Test, our bowler Hasib realised that the Indian umpire was calling a no-ball on every third delivery of his over, irrespective of the legality of the delivery. So finally, on the third ball of an over, he stopped just before delivering, and the umpire had already put his arm up to signal no ball.

There are countless other incidents one could recall. Ultimately, umpiring changed and improved drastically when neutral third-country officials were introduced. This move was pioneered by Imran Khan and the Pakistani board, as they knew they were talented enough to win fairly, and were tired of being accused of winning home series just because of biased umpiring.

So although we moan and complain and curse, the last 15 years of umpiring have been far better than what came before. Since the current system is going to be revolutionised this month by the referral system, let us pause a moment to reflect on what was, despite its failings, cricket's golden age of umpiring.

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