Tom Smith's Cricket Umpiring and Scoring

Tom Smith's Cricket Umpiring and Scoring is the standard reference for cricket umpires and scorers, from club level to the professional game: the full text of the Laws of Cricket alongside practical guidance and illustrated scenarios for applying them. It did not begin as "Tom Smith's" at all — it started in 1957 as a different book by a different author, and only took its familiar name decades later, in honour of the umpire who shaped it.

From Rait Kerr to Tom Smith

The book was first published in 1957 as Cricket Umpiring and Scoring, written by Colonel Rowan Rait Kerr, a former MCC secretary. Later editions were edited by Tom Smith, MBE, the umpire who in 1953 had founded the Association of Cricket Umpires — later the Association of Cricket Umpires and Scorers (ACU&S) — to train and accredit officials across the country. Around 1992, a further revision by Sheila Hill, MBE, and Robbie Robins saw the book renamed Tom Smith's Cricket Umpiring and Scoring, at the suggestion of Colin Pearson, as a permanent tribute to the man who had defined it for a generation.

Keeping pace with the Laws

The Laws of Cricket themselves have been re-coded by the MCC, their owner since 1788, six times in total; the current, seventh code was released in October 2017, with a third edition of that code taking effect in October 2022. When the Laws underwent a major rewrite for the 2000 Code, Colin Edwards, Graeme Lowrie and Graham Cooper undertook a corresponding rewrite of the umpiring guide, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2004, with further revised editions following in 2011 and 2012. Shortly before the ACU&S merged into the ECB's Association of Cricket Officials in 2008, copyright of the book passed to the MCC itself, which has published and updated it directly ever since; its most recently confirmed edition was issued by MCC in 2019, incorporating the then-current 2017 Code. Readers buying a copy today should check for a newer printing reflecting the Code's 2022 amendments, since MCC continues to revise the text as the Laws change.

What's actually inside

The book pairs the complete Laws of Cricket with interpretation, practical hints and worked examples of the situations umpires and scorers actually face — lbw decisions, run-outs, boundary calls, scoring conventions — aimed equally at working officials, players who want to understand the Laws properly, and spectators. It remains in use from schoolboy and club cricket up through the professional game, and its status as the standard guide is reinforced by its ownership: because MCC itself, the sole custodian of the Laws, now writes and publishes the book directly, there is effectively no other umpiring manual positioned to compete with it as the accepted interpretation of the Laws in practice.

The organisation behind the book

Tom Smith's Association of Cricket Umpires, founded in 1953, grew into the ACU&S with more than 8,000 members worldwide before its own governance became a source of dispute in the mid-2000s. In December 2007, members voted by 67% to 33% on a low turnout to merge with the ECB's Officials Association, a decision critics saw as a takeover engineered to secure funding from Sport England, and supporters defended as necessary investment in training and a wider profile for umpiring as a discipline in its own right. The merger took effect on 1 January 2008, forming what is now the ECB Association of Cricket Officials — the same reorganisation that handed the textbook's copyright to MCC and set up the ownership structure the book still operates under today.

Year	What changed
1957	First published as Cricket Umpiring and Scoring by Rowan Rait Kerr
~1992	Renamed Tom Smith's Cricket Umpiring and Scoring
2004	Rewritten for the 2000 Code; published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
2011-2012	Revised editions, Orion Publishing
2019	Published directly by MCC, covering the 2017 Code

For the Laws themselves rather than the guide to applying them, see this site's Laws of Cricket page.