Fun and games in the cricket between England and Pakistan! Pakistan did the big dummy spit when penalised by the umpires for tampering with the ball. They refused to return to the field after a break to continue play. As a result the umpires, Darrell Hair from Australia and Billy Doctrove from the West Indies, declared the match over and awarded the game to England, Pakistan’s refusal to play constituting a forfeit under the laws of cricket. It is the first time in 130 years of test cricket that a match has been forfeited.

Good on the umpires I reckon! Pakistan’s refusal to accept the umpires’ decision was shameful - sure they can feel aggrieved about a decision, and they can protest all they want through the right channels, but an open display of dissent towards the umpires’ decision is totally unacceptable …just not cricket. As well as the loss of the game, I believe the players involved need to be disciplined by the International Cricket Council (ICC), with fines and/or suspensions.

The Pakistanis are now saying they will refuse to play under Hair as umpire. The Chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), Shaharyar Khan, said:

“We are going to make it clear to the International Cricket Council that we are not going to play under the supervision of Hair in any future matches,”

and former Pakistan captain Imran Khan accused Hair of acting like a “mini-Hitler” and a “fundamentalist”.

Now I hope that the ICC puts Pakistan in its place over this. They should appoint Darrell Hair to umpire the next several tests in which Pakistan plays, and keep doing so until the Pakistanis pull their heads in over their allegations of Hair’s bias, and basically get on with playing. To bow to the demands of Pakistan will place all umpires and match officials in an untenable position … teams will know they can get their own way by intimidating the officials into submission.

Hair is no stranger to controversy. He was the umpire who no-balled Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan in 1995-96 for chucking, an action that has made him the enemy of Sri Lankan cricket followers ever since, and has resulted in the ICC going through all sorts of contortions to legitimise Muralitharan’s so called “bowling”. The Sri Lankans of course accuse anyone who is critical of his action of being biased or racist or similar, rather than just calling Murali’s bowling what it is - a mockery of what has been understood as “bowling” by everyone else through the history of cricket. The ICC’s backdown to accommodate Sri Lanka’s defence of Murali has been disgraceful, lets hope they don’t bend over to Pakistan over the current fracas.

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