The first story on the podcast came from Neil Dyer, a listener of the show, who explained how his side was once on the receiving end of some misplaced nepotism:

Neil Dyer: The most controversial incident I remember happening on a cricket field, I don’t see as controversial at all. We’d been promoted a league, the opposition had been demoted a league so they were a lot more serious than we were. Their star batsman came to the wicket with them in a little bother and even more so when he clattered a half-volley straight to cover who held on to an extremely good catch.

As we all went over to congratulate him, the batsman stood still and said, “that hit my pad”.

We were absolutely amazed as their umpire – this was the highest level in the league to have non-neutral umpires – a youngish lad, said “not out”! We all had to move on with the game as this batsman went on to score 130* or 140* and when we looked at the scorebook later that day, imagine our surprise to discover that the umpire was in fact the batsman’s son!

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