FOR a man who's first involvement in cricket umpiring was to appoint officials to games in Bathurst, Tony Wilds has certainly gone a long way.
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On Sunday its was confirmed that Wilds had retained his place on the 2020-21 National Umpire Panel despite the number of contracted officials being reduced from 12 to 10.
He is one of four NSW umpires on that Cricket Australia panel, with Gerard Abood, Paul Wilson and Greg Davidson the others.
Wilds retained his spot after a season which saw him umpire men's Big Bash League fixtures, Sydney grade and Sheffield Shield games and the women's T20 International Tri-Series before COVID-19 forced an early end to 2019-20.
"This will be my fourth season on the main panel. You just umpire away, do the best you can and hope you have a good season. The contracts for us are annual, so your performance each season is scrutinised," Wilds said.
"I did 12 games in the [men's] Big Bash and then I did the women's Tri Series with Australia, India and England and I did the final in that which was nice.
"Women's cricket has obviously picked up nicely in the last three-four years and when I was on the supplementary panel I did a lot of women's cricket. It's now gone up in status and it's the main panel now that do it, I hadn't done a women's international for two or three years, so that was nice.
"My last shield game was in Perth, that was sort of at the start of the virus and I flew back home in an almost empty plane, which was a bit bizarre.
"So it didn't effect a lot of out season. The last round of shield was called off and the final and in Sydney grade, we lost the final series completely, so that cut us short a bit, but cricket has been lucky in that it's mainly been in the off-season."
Since Wilds took up umpiring he has stood in a number of men's and women's Big Bash League fixtures, one-day cup and Sheffield Shield games, and in 2017 went to Japan for the ICC East Asia Pacific Women's T20 World Cup Qualifying Tournament.
It is a path that Wilds, also a talented soccer umpire, did not expect to take when he first retired from playing the sport.
"The cricket umpiring was after I finished playing I was asked by BDCA at the time to appoint the umpires for the following season which I did, then I took it up. It's just grown from there basically," he said.
"One thing leads to another but it's something like 12 or 13 seasons now I've been travelling up and down and doing grade in Sydney, which I still do if I'm available."
As for what matches the upcoming season will bring for Wilds, he is unsure given the impact the coronavirus has had on the sport. But whatever it is, he will no doubt work hard to remain on the national panel.
"We don't know much about it, it's going to be a totally different season. All we know at this point is the panel has been cut to 10 and we'll have a bigger workload to to cover," he said.
"We don't know what's going to go ahead and what's not. We normally get appointed in the middle of May and it's only just come out and with match referees, they're talking about not having them for some games, so it's all up in the air."
