WE'VE all heard of the Indian karaoke enthusiast, Gerupta Singh, and perhaps even the Iranian Elvis Presley impersonator, Amal Shuckup.

But what about all these other Singhs suddenly bursting on to the sporting scene? I can almost hear Gerupta bursting into a rendition of "I'd like to teach the world to Singh."

There's Vijay, of course, the Fijian who will shortly be defending his US Masters title and has already won twice this year.

Then there's another golfer, Jeev Milkha Singh, an Indian who was very much in the hunt at the Dubai Desert Classic last weekend until a final round of 71 left him joint sixth.

And there's Hanumant Singh, the match referee for England's Test matches in Sri Lanka. The first Test rocketed him to instant fame and he might also be considering an overtime claim in the second.

While the balance has tipped their way in Kandy, the appalling decisions in the first Test merely completed a nightmare scenario for England, begun by losing the toss and fielding for five sessions in 40-degree heat on a pitch which then broke up.

As the pitch problem continues to bedevil Test and county cricket, the answer is to do away with the toss and give the visitors the choice of whether to bat or bowl.

As for weak officials allowing themselves to be pressured into poor decisions by over-zealous appealing, we need either more professional umpires or greater use of technology.

Unfortunately, we can't have both because the more technology is used - in deciding lbws for example - the more umpires will be reduced to the role of pebble-counters.

Perhaps we could go to the technological extreme and replace umpires with robots, programmed to meet ridiculous appeals with the words: "You cannot be serious."

WE'VE had road rage, air rage and trolley rage; now we have ref rage.

This is well-documented in football, where childish tantrums have become the norm and it was refreshing to see Peter Reid taking a diplomatic line when Sunderland were denied what should have been a winning goal against Aston Villa.

More typical was Alan Shearer's rage when Everton were awarded their controversial late penalty last Saturday. The fact that Newcastle didn't deserve to win didn't enter his heat-of-the-moment reaction.

Generally, football refs cop some fearful stick, and it's also getting worse for cricket umpires, as witnessed when Darren Gough felt a Colts XI batsman should have been reprimanded for obstructing him.

Gough's finger-wagging would not raise England's popularity, which had already suffered from their belated insistence that the three-day game be reduced to one.

Now we also have a basketball coach in danger of being banned for publicly criticising two of the game's leading referees.

Newcastle Eagles' Tony Garbelotto had to be physically held back at the end of Sunday's 93-88 defeat at Sheffield, but he didn't hold back in his verbal attack.

He seems certain to be disciplined, and must hope that he isn't banned from the uni-ball trophy final against Chester in Birmingham on March 24.

HAVING saluted trainer Ferdy Murphy last week for realising ahead of the racing authorities that horses should not be travelling around the country, I sympathised with his predicament a few days later.

He still didn't want to take the slightest risk of bringing foot-and-mouth back to Wensleydale, but one of his owners insisted that his horse should run at Cheltenham.

I don't care what the so-called scientific evidence suggests, at a time when frightened farmers daren't even step outside their premises it sends out totally the wrong signals to allow racing to resume.

Had Cheltenham gone ahead it must have been very tempting for Ferdy to tell this particular owner to transport the horse to the Festival himself and not to bring it back to West Witton.

THE words best and greatest have been prominent recently. Don Bradman was the greatest cricketer who ever lived, we are told, England's rugby team is the best ever and Tiger Woods is still the greatest golfer, despite his last-hole blunder at Dubai.

The overwhelming statistical evidence is that Bradman was in a league of his own as a batsman, but I didn't hear of him taking many wickets, so Gary Sobers remains top of my list of greatest cricketers.

As for the England rugby team, they may well be the best we've had and it's a shame that doubts over the Irish match being staged will tarnish their season.

Watch out for some real shenanigans if the Six Nations committee insist on the match being played on May 5, clashing with the Zurich Championship play-off semi-finals. In fact, the fur is likely to start flying very shortly.

And what of Woods after his double bogey at the last hole? At least it proved he's human, but he'll still win the Masters, unless of course he gets Singhed