The Hair E-mails

So, Darrell Hair offered to resign from the ICC Panel, in return for a payment of half a million US dollars.

The e-mails, all apparently sent on Tuesday, make fascinating reading. First we have Hair, in a tone which seems to imply he thinks he's in some kind of position of strength:

I appreciate the ICC may be put in a untenable position with regards to future appointments and having taken considerable time and advice, I make this one-off, non-negotiable offer.

I am prepared to retire/stand down/relinquish my position on the elite panel to take effect from 31st August 2006 on the following terms...

He goes on to ask for a one off payment of a cool half million dollars, and to say:

I reiterate this is a once only offer and if I fail to obtain your agreement....

Evidently the words of someone who believes he has an offer that's worth considering, and, as far as it seems, someone who thinks that the ICC would be willing to pay not to have to make the awkward decision about whether or not to employ him in games involving Pakistan again.

Doug Cowie (the Umpires' boss), replies, CC'ed to Dave Richardson, ex-SA wicket keeper, qualified lawyer and ICC General Manager. And then Hair sends another!

It appears from overnight developments that the issue of racism has arisen and from advice I have just received, the sum indicated in my release offer is being revised.

Which way, I wonder? One can only assume up... In which case, what the hell is Hair playing at? This is really starting to sound like pay me to keep quiet.

The killer, though, is the reply from Malcolm Speed, the ICC's boss. It's without question a very hard slap. I don't think Mr. Speed is at all pleased with Darrell:

The matters raised by you concerning your future employment are entirely inappropriate. [my emphasis] There is a clear process that is to be followed and it is in place. I will call you tomorrow to advise as to progress.

Hair's reply puzzles me:

Thanks Malcolm, I have revoked the email.

As you say it is inappropriate and we will see how things unfold over the next few days. It would appear that life will go on regardless.

"As you say...": in other words, he knew it was?

This correspondence was composed after a very difficult time and was revoked by myself two days later after a period of serious consideration.

Doesn't quite gel with the purported dates on the mails, either.

Kudos to the ICC for releasing the emails: Speed's comment on Hair is priceless:

"I have said to him that he is not sacked, he is not suspended, and he has not been charged.

"I also said to him that I didn't guarantee that each of those three positions would be maintained indefinitely."

Bloody right.

In the opinion of the umpire...

The ICC have at least displayed the correct, in fact as far as I can see the only, response to yesterday's events at the Oval. Hair and Doctrove have done nothing wrong within the Laws - they've applied Laws 42.3 and 21.3 as the Laws provide, and according to a statement late last night from the ICC, the result stands, and Pakistan are under investigation, as the playing conditions demand, for a breach of Law 42.3 and, we'd assume, 21.3.

Let's make that clear: the ICC don't have a choice. Not to back the umpires for applying the letter of the Laws, even if it was done in a heavy-handed and unsympathetic manner, would be madness. If they hadn't, then we may as well throw most of Law 42 and several other Laws out of the window.

Cricket is, compared to many other organised sports, a very subjective game. I can't think of another sport in which one of the more commonly applied laws, one that materially affects the course of the game far more than (say) a yellow card in football, namely Law 36 (Leg Before Wicket), contains words of the same tenor as that Law's key phrase "in the umpire's opinion", about such a subjective thing. Indeed, the whole concept of being 'out' is rooted in the fact that you are not out unless the fielding side's appeal to the umpire is successful. Witness any number of batsmen (Cook yesterday, for a prime example) standing their ground when they surely must know they've hit the cover off the ball.

I don't have a problem with that: as long as you're consistent - I prefer to see batsmen walk, but... If you wait for the umpire to give you out in those circumstances, that's fine, but you must then, in my book, accept the rough with the smooth, and when you're given out caught behind off the pad, all you're entitled to is a philosophical shrug. Not walking is, whether you like it or not, an accepted part of cricket.

In all organised sport, one of the implicit conditions of participation is that you, in effect, sign up to say "I agree to abide by the rules", and one of the first of those rules in any sport says something to the effect of 'the officials are in charge of the game and their decisions are binding'. In effect, they are the avatar of the rules of the game on the field of play.

Even if they're wrong.

Even if they're so blindingly, muddle-headedly wrong it costs you the game.

The game on the field is, or should be, sacred to those rules. If the rules are wrong or badly applied, the place to protest is not on the field, however justified you feel your protest is. You signed up to play by those rules, with that set of officials, when you took the field.

Credit to Inzi for accepting the decision when it happened. As I've said before, some captains would have led their side straight off the field: I still think Hair was very likely mistaken, and Inzi and the Pakistan team had every right to be upset at the decision. But the events of yesterday are as much of their making as the umpires. The field of play is not the place for such a protest: they are still bound by the Laws, and the umpire as their avatar.

If Shahryar Khan (as Chairman of the PCB) can be taken as representing his team's views, then they clearly wanted to play, as borne out by later statements. They also clearly felt wronged, and, in my opinion, probably they were. There are appropriate fora in which to express that: doing so within the context of the game of cricket renders their actions liable to interpretation within the Laws of the game, and they have, unfortunately, no redress for what happened as far as the result of the game goes.

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Bad Hair Day

Ok. So. The dust is settling on today, at least. The teams are willing to play, but, as far as the umpires are concerned, Pakistan have forfeited the match by refusing to turn out after tea.

To quote the ICC statement:

"After lengthy negotiations which resulted in agreement between the teams, the match referee and both the ECB and PCB to resume the fourth Test tomorrow, it was concluded that with regret there will be no play on the fifth day.

"The fourth Test has therefore been forfeited with the match being awarded to England.

"In accordance with the laws of cricket, it was noted that the umpires had correctly deemed that Pakistan had forfeited the match and awarded the test to England."

Let's look at what happened:

The ball.

The TV pictures of Hair inspecting the ball do show that it's scuffed to buggery, if you'll pardon the expression - there's at least two patches on it the size of my thumbnail that look to have lost the top layer of leather, and those two patches are visibly paler, even on a poorish contrast LCD monitor, than the rest, all on the same side near the seam. CricInfo's commentator reckoned that the quarter seam showed signs of being lifted.

Hair (as the senior umpire and a known stickler for the letter of the Laws) evidently felt that the state of the ball had been arrived at by tampering, as per Law 42.3 (d) - "In the event of any fielder changing the condition of the ball unfairly..." , and awarded five penalty runs.

And, to his credit (and in marked contrast to what some former Pakistani captains might have done (an opinion shared by Rameez Raja), Inzamam (though understandably upset) got on with the job in hand.

The protest.

That gets us to the early tea interval caused by bad light, after which, the umpires come out. England, one assumes because by convention the batting side come out second, wait, and Pakistan, according to Shahryar Khan's interview with both Mark Nicholas of Channel 5 and Michael Holding of Sky, refuse to come out immediately, as a protest against the penalty. According to Khan, Pakistan are about to come out when Hair and Doctrove come off, presumably because they wish to inform both teams of their responsibilities under Law 21.3..

We can make a pretty reasonable assumption, that England say 'nope, not us, we're waiting to come out after the fielding side', and Pakistan explain their protest, since 'ascertaining' the cause of the action can't be reasonably done without asking the parties involved! My best guess at this point is that Hair says words which boil down to 'protest noted, we're going back out, both teams join us or forfeit under 21.3 (b).'

According to Khan (again), Pakistan apparently needed to think about that. Hair and Doctrove came out, England came out, Pakistan didn't. Hair applies 21.3 (b).

The aftermath.

Much discussion ensues, driven by the respective boards (as evidenced by the heads of the PCB and ECB disappearing into the Pakistan dressing room), and some time later, the Pakistan side come out. And, quite clearly, the umpires don't, and, ultimately, won't.

Analysis.

The ball.

It's not clear whether anyone was seen tampering with it, since no-one from the ICC or the umpires has made any statement yet, but there's no video evidence that Sky TV (responsible for the UK coverage) have managed to find between the fall of Cook's wicket and the awarding of the penalty runs fifteen minutes later that shows anyone doing anything to the ball that contravenes Law 42.3.

Now: obviously, you can make of that what you will. Either Hair saw someone tampering with the ball that the cameras missed, or he was going on the changed state of the ball. And then - either the ball was tampered with, and Inzi and team are lying, or it wasn't, and they aren't. I'm not making any accusations there, just presenting the range of possibilities.

If we go back and scan CricketArchive's ball by ball, we see that Cook was out at ball 51.5, at which point we assume Hair (again, as the senior umpire) would have examined the ball, as Law 42.3 (c) instructs him to do. It was at that point, though, already reverse swinging, and had taken some fair tap from Pietersen, including several boundaries - not having access to the video, I can't tell how many of them would have had a chance of impacting something hard. There's one more boundary between then and the penalty runs at 55.6, a 'blistering' cover drive from Pietersen at 52.4: again, no way of telling from the text comms what happened to the ball.

Hair, as a known stickler for the laws, followed precisely the provisions of Law 42.3, which, mark you, do not at any point require the umpires to warn the fielding side, merely consult with each other. There are no extra notes in the question and answer files on this section of the Laws, either. nor in the current ICC Test playing conditions.

So. First question: was Hair mistaken? Clearly the Pakistan side feel so: there is no video evidence to back up the accusation, but, if we're being rigourous, refuting it requires more than 'no pictures I can find prove it', since there's no way (even with 25 cameras) Sky can guarantee to have tracked the progress of the ball for every instant of those 4 overs, let alone half an hour. We find ourselves falling between the two stools of "innocent until proven guilty" versus "the umpires are the sole arbiters of fair versus unfair play".

The protest.

Now we get into the realms of attempting to analyse people's reactions and intent in the light of what little information we have. Hair clearly believes there was tampering. Inzi and Pakistan feel strongly enough that there wasn't to protest.

There's two points to be made here: one is that right or wrong, Law 3 provides that Hair and Doctrove are the arbiters of fair and unfair play. In the same way that if you nick the ball onto your pad, and the finger goes up for LBW, you have no choice but to take the long walk, there is a definite case that whatever the rightness of the situation, Hair's decision must stand. And let's note that Inzamam did, indeed, let it stand without on field protest. Unlike, say, Ranatunga leading the Sri Lankan side off the field in past incidents involving the noballing of Murali.

The second point is that the Pakistani protest was, if Khan is to be believed (and I see no reason not to), not a refusal to finish the game, but a brief (apparently at least 5 minutes) refusal to take the field as a protest against what's effectively an accusation of cheating. We assume they told Hair this when he reminded them of the provisions of Law 21.3.

The law says, and I quote: "If an umpire considers that an action by any player or players might constitute a refusal by either side to play then the umpires together shall ascertain the cause of the action. If they then decide together that this action does constitute a refusal to play by one side, they shall so inform the captain of that side. If the captain persists in the action the umpires shall award the match in accordance with (a)(ii) above.". Note again, the decision is the umpires'.

We don't know what went on in there. Again, though, Hair is, by all accounts, not a very hands-on, symathetic umpire (unlike, say, Taufel - Boycott on Channel 5 described Hair as 'a policeman') and I suspect (as above) it was a very blunt summary of Law 21.3, and what would happen if Pakistan didn't take the field once the umpires went back out. Equally, Pakistan as a side are described by many commentators as 'fiercely proud', and an approach like that would, not unreasonably, add fuel to the already growing flames.

Whose fault is it?

So. Who's to blame?

There is no doubt, in my mind, that Hair handled it badly. Even if there is evidence of ball tampering, a more sympathetic umpire would have had a quiet word, even though the Laws don't provide for it, along the lines of 'That ball looks like a dog chewed it. If that's your doing, you really ought to stop, because it's naughty and otherwise I'll be put in a position where I have to take action." Hair isn't that kind of man, though.

And so, Pakistan's backs are already up: Hair's waded in with both feet and a copy of the Laws, perfectly correctly but less than sympathetically. I don't condone the protest, but I do understand it: the more I think about it, the more it feels as though Hair, as well as being heavy-handed, was genuinely mistaken. Not maliciously: just wrong. Pakistan's reaction feels like a response both to the impilict accusation *and* the manner of it. And then Hair compounds the problem by wading in again after the protest, effectively threatening Pakistan with forfeiture of the game if they don't comply. Not the best approach in the circumstances, but, again, exactly what the law calls for.

And there we have it: I don't condone, as I've said, Pakistan's protest. Hair was quite probably wrong, and they were understandably offended. Particularly so since Pakistan have had players found guilty of ball-tampering in the past, and to be found guilty when they aren't, does tend to provoke more of a reaction (as there's the sense of 'give a dog a bad name and hang him'). But the Laws are what they are, and the umpires' decisions are final.

Hair is, quite clearly, one who applies the Laws to the letter. He needs to learn more diplomacy, as even after the penalty award, and the protest, I'm sure this mess could have been averted. If it was, as Khan said, a token protest, and the side would come out again, then laying the provisions of Law 21.3 on them with a heavy hand, when you're the cause of the protest in the first place... not so smart. And it does appear that Hair's sticking to his guns. Read the press release again: "...agreement between the teams, the match referee and both the ECB and PCB to resume the fourth Test tomorrow...". Note who's missing from that list.

Current status

What we're hearing now, from Shahryar Khan, Pakistan Cricket Board chairman, is that Pakistan delayed coming out after tea as a protest, and that they were in fact willing to come out and play having registered said protest, and that the umpires, in effect, applied Law 21.3:
(b) If an umpire considers that an action by any player or players might constitute a refusal by either side to play then the umpires together shall ascertain the cause of the action. If they then decide together that this action does constitute a refusal to play by one side, they shall so inform the captain of that side. If the captain persists in the action the umpires shall award the match in accordance with (a)(ii) above.


To be clear: Hair and Doctrove came out once, Pakistan didn't, England didn't because they were the batting side, and you by tradition come out second.... As Hair and Doctrove walk off, Inzi and the rest of his team are about to come out, but obviously don't. The umpires then, apparently, point out law 21.3, and go out again. England opt to come out. Pakistan apparently elect not to...

I can appreciate that protest from Inzi's point of view. BUT:

We have a number of Laws in the Laws of Cricket which provide for penalties for unfair play (vide Law 42, Fair and Unfair Play and Law 24.2, No Ball). We also have a very clear statement in the laws, Law 3.7, that The umpires shall be the sole judges of fair and unfair play..

Which leads me to a very simple question: if you're not willing to play in accordance with the full Laws of Cricket, and accept that the umpires are the enforcers of those Laws, what the hell are you doing on a cricket field?

England v Pakistan, 4th Test

I was about to comment on various things to do with this match, was considering leaving it till the end, since comments mid-game almost inevitably make you look spectacularly stupid four overs later...

But...

As the BBC put it:

...the umpires have picked up the ball and are examining it closely. They call Trevor Jesty on with the box of spare balls, and we could have a diplomatic incident here. They're changing the ball, and that can mean only one thing - the umpires think the Pakistan team have tampered with the ball.

Lordy - Inzamam's furious. To him this is tantamount to being called a cheat. A five-run penalty has been given against Pakistan, and this one's going to run and run.

It's been interesting now to listen to the reactions of various Pakistani commentators and journalists. Rameez Raja on TMS is firmly in the 'this is a disgrace, Pakistan weren't cheating' camp. The journalist interviewed by CMJ at tea (whose name I didn't catch) was much more of the 'it was a really stupid thing to do if they did' camp.

Rameez also made the comment that Inzi took it much better than some ex-captains would have. Wonder who he could mean?

And now, it appears, Pakistan are refusing to come out after the rain break. To the extent the umpires and England players have gone back in again. Still as far as I'm aware, there's been no indication from Hair and Doctrove (the umpires) as to the precise details of the transgression, and nothing from Mike Proctor the match referee.

Hair has a history of not being afraid to bite the bullet and call things he sees as against the Laws: remember Murali's being noballed by him seven times in three overs for throwing. I, personally, have no doubt that he believes he saw evidence of ball tampering, although, as yet, we have no idea whether he saw a ball that materially changed condition in a short period of time, or whether he actually saw a Pakistani player alter the condition of the ball in an illegal manner.

At the moment, the relevant Laws are:

Re: the condition of the ball:
Law 42: specifically 42.3 b and d.
Re: Pakistan not coming out:
Law 21: specifically 21.3 b.

We wait.