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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