An 80-Year-Old Umpire in an Evening Field: India's Invisible Umpiring Pipeline

It is 7:30 in the evening at Central Gymkhana in Indore. The lights over the ground are still on. A junior 50-over match is in progress, but nobody is paying much attention to the scoreboard. Twenty to twenty-five boys per side, aged twelve to fifteen—some batting, some bowling, others simply waiting their turn. In a game like this, the result matters less than the learning. I walked into Central Gymkhana with a notebook and left with a pulse.

On one side of the ground, an eighty-year-old man was teaching the boys how a run-out actually happens. The ball must be in hand, the bails must be dislodged, only then can the umpire decide. He was also teaching them that a bowled dismissal needs no appeal, but that a front-foot or back-foot no-ball can only be learned in a live match, not in a classroom. A little earlier, rain had stopped play, and parents had surrounded the coach, asking for the game to resume. That is the familiar rhythm of this ground: rain, waiting, and then the restart. And it is in those waiting gaps that cricket's most essential lessons are passed on. The man's name is Narendra Menon.

Central Gymkhana is not just a ground; it is a dense node of Indore's cricket infrastructure. Three organisations operate on the same campus—Mayo Cricket Club, Cricket Club of Indore, and the Indore Divisional Cricket Association. Beside Mayo Cricket Club, active since the 1960s, stands a club run by former BCCI selector Sanjay Jagdale. Indore, then, is no isolated outpost—it is a recognised talent node of Indian domestic cricket, where hundreds of boys get to play every day on the same field.

The shape of junior cricket here is different. The 50-over matches run from 3:30 in the afternoon to 8:30 or 9 at night. Twenty to twenty-five boys per side are rotated through. The design is clear: every boy should face as many balls, bowl as many overs, and understand as many rules as possible. These long after-school sessions are, in effect, a planned development programme, not a competition. Here nobody loses; everyone learns.

Narendra Menon's own life is a complete cycle. He began as a first-class cricketer. In 2026, the BCCI decided to induct first-class cricketers into umpiring—Menon was in that first batch of ten, alongside S. Venkataraghavan and A.V. Jayaprakash. He went on to become an international umpire, his last international match in 2026. Then, in 2026, he took on the role of national umpire coach, serving for roughly a decade. Now he has returned to the grass, beside the junior boys—because about four years ago, his grandson began to play.

At the centre of his umpiring philosophy is identity-neutrality. Menon's rule: do not look at the face of the batter or the bowler—look only at what is below the waist. Because seeing a star's face lets bias creep in. He followed this himself, and gave the same advice to his son Nitin Menon, now one of India's foremost international umpires. This is, in effect, a bias-mitigation protocol, aligned with the core principles of modern umpire training.

Seared into Menon's memory is the 2026 Ranji Trophy final. In Hyderabad's innings against Mumbai, VVS Laxman was run out—the bat, as he recalls, was only marginally short of the crease, with an edge above but the foot outside. That fine judgement is the real test of first-class umpiring. He officiated two Ranji finals, in 2026 and 2026, both in Mumbai. In domestic cricket, there is no bigger appointment.

Then there are the pipeline numbers. In his words, at least thirty boys from this ground have gone on to the Indore division, and five or six have reached state level. These figures are his own, not independently verified—so they should be taken as indicative, not as audited proof. Still, five or six boys reaching state level from a single club is not a common occurrence outside a metropolis, and it points to a functioning bottom-of-the-pyramid feeder.

Times have changed. By Menon's count, grounds once had five or six cameras; now there are twenty to twenty-five. In the technology era, an umpire's mistake can no longer be hidden—so mental preparation is now the biggest challenge. Menon has said that an umpire cannot run away from any mistake. Tiger Pataudi once remarked that a third umpire was not needed at all. That era is gone. Menon is, in fact, one of the last peaks of the pre-technology age, now standing before DRS-era boys and teaching them the Laws.

It is easy to read this profile as "the father of Nitin Menon"—a story that borrows a celebrity's name, draws the reader in through the son's fame, and then shows the father's lesser-known life. But the real error lies precisely there. Nitin Menon's success is not the news here; the news is the institution standing behind him. The 2026 batch, the 2026 coaching post, and now the decision to return to the grass and teach the Laws—all three are signs of a supply chain.

And within that sign lies an uncomfortable truth. An eighty-year-old man standing from evening to night in junior matches, teaching the Laws, is not merely an inspirational story—it is also an indication of thin depth. If umpire training runs on a few devoted veterans, what happens to that pipeline on the day they stop? The profile does not ask this question, but its facts place it before us. Where a club stands on the same character for twenty-five years, it is worth thinking about the depth of the coaching tier.

There is no crowd at this domestic ground, no row of cameras. Yet empty grounds can still sing, if you know where to listen. I once covered Croatia's World Cup campaign—seven matches, three of them going to extra time—and there I learned how a team can come to belong to scattered people even without a crowd. These Indore evenings recall the same truth: before the big stage, every story begins on a small ground, quietly.

If Indore's model spreads elsewhere in the years ahead, India's talent base could widen beyond the metros. But a single club's fragment of a story cannot justify a claim of systemic change. What is needed is a deep, institutional tier of umpire-coaches—where everything does not depend on the personal dedication of one eighty-year-old veteran. Menon is still standing on the ground. The question is: when he no longer stands, who will teach the Laws on that evening field?