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John Richard Collins, popularly known as Jack Collins was an Australian umpire who was born on 1 August 1932 in Victoria, Australia.
Early Career
Collins started his umpiring career in the year of 1965 standing at the Australian first class cricket. Soon, he was considered as one of the best and fair minds at the domestic circle. After 5 years of his first game, he officiated his first List-A match. Between the year of his debut at domestic circle and 1975, he umpired 41 first class fixtures. Collins was considered as a Test match specialist, as he only umpired 9 List A games from 1970 to 1979.
Umpiring career
Collins was first picked up for the 1971-72 South Africa’s tour to Australia but that tour had been cancelled due to the protest against apartheid policies going on in South Africa. As a result, ICC announced a Test-Series between Australia and the World Team to compensate the loss. Collins officiated one of the matches and witnessed Sir Garfield Sobers scoring 254. Later in an interview, he had regarded this innings as the greatest he ever saw in his career. Although this series between the hosts and World Team never got an official recognition.
Gaining several year experience at domestic cricket, Collins made his international debut on 29 December 1972 in a Test match between the host Australia and Pakistan. Australia had won the match defeating Pakistan by 92 runs.
The only ODI he stood in, was a match of Australian Tri Series (CB Series) held in 1979 at Sydney Cricket Ground between Australia and England. Visitors had won this match by 72 runs.
Stats
Collins served as an umpire between the years of 1972 and 1975 and in this short span of time, he umpired 5 international Test matches. On 11 December 1979, his career saw his first and last ODI.
Controversies
Although Collins was a fair umpire, but his last match witnessed his career’s only controversy that also led his career to an end. This was a Test match held on 26 December to 30 December 1975 between Australia and the visiting team West Indies at Melbourne. Australia had defeated the visitors by 8 wickets. At the end of the match, Collins was criticised by West Indian captain Clive Lloyd stating Collins was not up with Test match rules and turned down a number of possible LBW appeals. Lloyd also suggested Cricket Australia to change Collins with someone else in the next match of the series.
