Picking the positives from the mire at the Oval

First, a couple of thoughts on the incident. Hair penalising Pakistan for ball tampering without warning or talking to the captain and then refusing to show him the ball reeks of officiousness. Pakistan had the right to protest, but their form of protest was plain silly, which is surprising consdering that they had Bob Woolmer in their dressing room (I have an extremely poor opinion of Inzi's acumen and so does Osman Samiuddin). They could have made the call to forfeit the game during tea, or continued to play under some other form of protest. By delaying play by 50 mins and expecting the umpires and the English players to oblige, they forced the umpires to make the hard call, which they did (correctly, IMO). To my dismay, some authors have condemned this decision based on 'the show must go on' idea. If sports is all about the show, leading to the rules being bent every time there is a controversy, then we might as well get the Hollywood stars to run the show. We all know that they are better at it!

Now, unlikely as it might seem, there are positives to come out of this scrap...

1) Darrell Hair: Yes, DARRELL HAIR! For a moment, let's put aside the common Asian consensus that he is biased against the Asian nations. Agreed that that is a whole lot to put aside, considering his track record, but on the other hand, he has been a member of the ICC's elite umpires panel through the reign of the Indian and Pakistani ICC presidents. Plus, he is an Australian involved in cricket. If that is not a valid argument for quality, nothing is!

Like I said earlier, calling off the match was the correct decision. It was a sad day for cricket....YES! It would disillusion some people....YES! But a clear message has been sent across that if a team does not turn up to play, it will be defaulted. At this point, the ICC can debate the merits of the current rule and can advise its umpires the way it sees fit, but at the point of occurence of the incident, the rule was clear and it needed Darrell Hair to implement it.

Now, lets get back to Hair and the contentious decision of penalising Pak for ball tampering without witnessing anyone in particular meddling with it. I am of the opinion that he would have had an inkling of the mess he would be getting himself into by making that call. Yet, he chose to make it. His act of calling it as he sees it is rare and deserves recognition outside of Aus also. It could be a case of foolish stubbornness, but to quote him "if anything comes out at the inquiry that proves me incorrect I would accept that too". Nothing more can/should be asked of any person.

Hair's previous record of calling Muralitharan for chucking is often brought up as a negative. Over the years, it has been clear that he is not the only one that holds that opinion. Quite a few eminent personalities (I am not referring to Bishen Singh Bedi here) in the game have raised similar concerns. Even after all the testing, not everyone is convinced (not that that should matter to Murali). Venkat, Shepherd, Bucknor have all umpired Murali at different points. They chose to endorse his action. Whether that is something they believed or did to avoid controversy, we will never know. But what Hair thinks, we all know!

2) Pakistani solidarity: Yes, Pakistani's are showing solidarity and the opponents are NOT the Indians. It helps a lot that there aren't any former captains in his squad (this statement is open to be corrected. Hard to keep track of Pakistani cricket captains), but the voice emanating from the Pak dressing room indicated clearly that if Inzi is banned, the ODI series would be called off.

Now, let me put aside my hatred for Inzi and get if off my chest by saying that this man has brought together a Pak cricket team that is loyal to its leader (DISCLAIMER: He might be sacked and replaced by .......say, Moin Khan, at the end of the tour by a player revolt). As mentioned earlier, his tactical nous is at best, open to questioning. However, whatever it is, there is something to him that has ensured loyalty from his players. Samiuddin, in this case, attributes it to the role religion has come to play in this team. But for sure, Inzamam's genial demeanour has aided the process greatly.

Inzamam has spoken out forcefully that the ball tampering allegation without proof is a slur on team and nation. When I read that, instinctively, I felt that those were words carefully chosen to gain the backing of his country. My thoughts on that remain the same, now, however, I see where it came from. Mention ball tampering and there is only one country that comes to mind. Former bowlers from various countries have admitted that they have played around with the seam of the cricket ball all through their careers. However, the stigma is almost solely associated with Pakistan. On that note, the manner in which the British media (and hence the public) embraced reverse swing last year during the Ashes was in sharp contrast to the way it was seen when Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis deployed it to deadly effect back in 1992. So, accepting the accusation of ball tampering (worse, when playing against England) would have been perfect fodder for a lot of stereotypes to gain strength.

If he honestly believed that his team did not do anything wrong, then, he was right to take on the umpires in protest. He has his team's backing on that one!

3) Ball tampering: Woolmer has already spoken out that tampering the ball with objects found naturally within the field should be made legal. And this is not a new idea either. When allegations of ball tampering came out during the 90s, several former bowlers suggested that if made legal, ball tampering would enhance the skills in the game (of course, if/when made legal, we need to find a different term for it).

Seeing the number of batter's paradises masquerading as test match cricket pitches, this is something that should be given a lot of thought. As is well acknowledged, the bowler-batsman battle is skewed more and more in the batsman's favour. Being allowed to 'work on the ball' would add considerably to a bowler's arsenal and a lot of these batathons would cease to exist.

However, considering that ball tampering is a much misunderstood concept, legalising it might be taking in more than the game can swallow. So, it would require a committee to debate the merits and de-merits of the same before a decision is made. I can foresee a slowing down of run rates if the ball does something through the innings. Whether this would results in more draws or test matches that do not last the distance, only experimentation with the rule can say.


Quite a few revelations have been made since I drafted this post. Woolmer spoke about retirement thoughts (which leads me to believe that he wasn't happy with the decision of his team) and more sensationally, Hair has sent out an email to the ICC asking for money in return for his retirement (to me, this does not indicate that he made a wrong call in the game, but just that the pressure was getting to him). Anyway, the shocks are set to continue through the coming days....