Editorial: Playing the umpire, not the ball

Opinion

Three years ago, during a one-day international in Pakistan, umpire Darrell Hair reported South African captain Shaun Pollock for dissent and wicketkeeper Mark Boucher for using abusive language against a Pakistani player. That, however, is not something anyone associated with Pakistani cricket wishes to highlight right now. They are more interested in tarring the Australian umpire with the brush of bias and boorishness. Anything rather than focus on the on-field behaviour and subsequent foolishness that led to the forfeiting of a test against England at the Oval.

The Pakistani players were incensed when Mr Hair and fellow umpire Billy Doctrove decided they had been guilty of ball tampering and docked them five runs. After the tea interval, they stayed in the dressing room as a protest, a decision that led to them becoming the first team in test cricket history to forfeit a match. Subsequently, their captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq, has been charged by the International Cricket Council with ball tampering and bringing the game into disrepute.

It is apparent that Mr Hair has not the most sensitive of manners. He applies the laws of cricket with a hard-nosed officiousness. The saving grace is that he is one of the game's best adjudicators. He applies the law without fear and, as his action against Pollock and Boucher confirms, without favour. It is ridiculous to suggest, as Pakistanis sometimes do, that he has a racially-inspired bias against cricketers from the subcontinent.

To back that claim, the finger is always pointed at Mr Hair's calling of the Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah Muralitharan for "chucking" 10 years ago. Yet that was an example of an umpire going where others had feared to tread, even though the player's action had long been damned by most knowledgeable observers. Mr Hair was eventually proved right when the ICC relaxed the law to accommodate Muralitharan.

As with chucking, the umpiring community has been far from united against ball tampering. There are precedents, however. In 2000, when match referees held greater sway, John Reid suspended Pakistani fast bowler Waqar Younis for one match and fined him half his match fee for lifting the seam off the ball. Other players, including England's Mike Atherton, India's Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid and Pakistan's Shoaib Akhtar, have also been found guilty of ball tampering. But as the search for reverse swing intensifies and the practice proliferates, action has been sporadic.

The odd thing about the alleged tampering at the Oval is that it was not picked up by any of 26 television cameras. It is, effectively, the word of Mr Hair against that of the Pakistani players. But the umpire is surely experienced enough to be able to gauge when tampering has occurred.

So far, the ICC is backing Mr Hair. This it must continue to do, even though in the murky, increasingly Asian-dominated world of cricket politics, that cannot be taken for granted. After the Muralitharan episode, for example, Mr Hair found himself excluded from the panel of elite umpires.

At stake here is the ICC's ability to say what umpires stand where. Pakistan does not want Mr Hair to officiate in any of its future fixtures. Some commentators suggest that, given the sensitivities, he should not have been involved in their matches for some time. But bowing to Pakistan on this issue would be akin to a victory for the ball tamperers.

Pakistan has been the main perpetrator of this scourge. If it feels disgrace at being portrayed as a cheat, it should direct its anger at the players who stand accused of besmirching its reputation, not at an umpire striving to uphold the laws of the game. The ICC, for its part, must be as unswerving as Mr Hair if it wishes to safeguard cricket's credibility.