Umpiring, as Darrell Hair will tell you, is a difficult and thankless task.

I had a go at umpiring a couple of years ago. I got a call, out of the blue, from Hardeep Singh Kohli. Hardeep is a busy and successful man. He presents Newsnight Review, numerous Radio 4 programmes and many television documentaries. He even came second on Celebrity Master Chef to the famously modest and self-deprecating Matt Dawson.

I’d only met him once before; why was he calling me? Perhaps he wanted to collaborate with me on a documentary about Hawaii? In fact it was better than that. A mutual friend had told him that I liked cricket and Hardeep and his pals needed someone to make up an 11 for a game in Surrey the next day.

So, he picked me up in his sporty two-seater and after three hours of winding country lanes we arrived at a stunningly picturesque ground. We batted first and seeing as I was not due in for a while and the weather was clement, I volunteered for a bit of umpiring.

Hardeep came in first wicket down and I was standing at the bowler’s end. The sun was shining, the outfield was green and our kit was dazzlingly white. Nothing could have been finer. But then Hardeep flicked a ball to leg and called for a single just as midwicket gathered and threw a swift return to the bowler’s end. I quickly got in line with the popping crease, squatted in position in that way that umpires do and watched the throw come in. The bowler caught it cleanly and broke the wicket. Their whole team appealed enthusiastically.

Now, as I say, I had only met Hardeep once before that day. The rest of the team were complete strangers to me. It was Hardeep who had answered the call from the team captain to find an 11th player; Hardeep who had collected me and then driven me here. To even contemplate giving him out would have been insane. Yet I was quite convinced that at the moment the stumps were broken, Hardeep’s bat was on the crease – on it, but not over. Before I had time to think about what I was doing, I’d raised my finger.

Hardeep stared at me in disbelief. The rest of my team jeered me from the boundary. The opposition celebrated at their enormous slice of luck. I felt terrible for Hardeep. It was only as he trudged off that I remembered him telling me that he hoped we batted first as he wouldn’t have time to stay for the second innings. I had ruined his day.

The rest of the match was a success. We scored quite a lot, they scored very little. Although I fell into a stream at long on, I also managed to hit the stumps with my first and fourth deliveries.

But all I could do was think about my umpiring decision. I’ve seen Hardeep a few times since and he usually mentions his run out. It’s one of those incidents that I suddenly find myself thinking about for no apparent reason when lying awake at night, or stuck on a train somewhere, the moment of his dismissal playing over and over again in my head. I always feel guilty and embarrassed. But all the same, when I close my eyes, and I really think about it, I know that I was right.

I imagine that Hair is feeling like that this week.

Miles Jupp is an actor, comedian and cricket fan