Candidates appearing for the Board-conducted Refresher Course for Level-1 umpires were flabbergasted by the question paper they got on June 10.
The first set of exams were held on June 7 in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Nagpur and Kolkata. Three days later, candidates appeared in Indore, Pune, Chennai and Visakhapatnam. The huge difference in the degree of difficulty in the two papers has left many puzzled.
According to a young candidate, the June 7 paper was straightforward. “It was straight out of the law book except for a couple of questions,” he said. “Paper 2 (June 10) was full of tricky and hypothetical situations where a lot of thinking was needed.”
“There is an element of doubt that the earlier paper was set to help certain set of candidates. But why should candidates competing for the same post be treated differently... easy questions for some and very difficult for the others,” bemoaned a candidate, who had prepared hard for the course.
One of the candidates who appeared for the exam in Visakhapatnam said, “The paper required a lot more time to complete than the two hours that were given because of the number of questions.
“It surely put candidates who appeared on June 10 in a tough situation. I feel the whole process was to deny candidates from some associations.”
It is learnt that of the eight educators, four are retired umpires. “Did these officials go through a course? Even the educators who saw the paper on the day of the exams were clueless about some of the answers.
“What was the criteria involved in selecting these educators? I also wonder why the exams were not held on the same day at different centres. The candidates would not have felt being discriminated against,” said a former umpire.
“Earlier the Board conducted two exams for umpires — State panel and Ranji panel. Now it is Level 1, Level 1 refresher, Level 2 theory, practicals and Viva.
“It takes close to five years to become a BCCI panel umpire. And then such exams that discriminate can be very disheartening.”
