Richard Boock: Advice to test cricket - get a Hair cut

It's looking like Hair today gone tomorrow for the world's most controversial cricket umpire.

Darrell Hair, once ranked as one of the game's best officials, has suffered such a comprehensive loss of credibility this week that it's hard to imagine him resurrecting his international career.

Never far from headlines during his reign, Hair was yesterday told he was wrong to accuse Pakistan of ball-tampering in last month's eventually forfeited fourth test against England, because the charge couldn't possibly be proved.

To make matters worse for him, Inzamam ul-Haq's suspension for four ODIs for refusing to play was the smallest allowed under ICC regulations, suggesting that all sympathy - if any - lay with the defendant.

Given Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka have all expressed reservations about Hair's impartiality, he cannot stand in Australian games because of ICC rules and he has refused on principle to officiate in Zimbabwe, it appears that his future is looking increasingly grim.

It might be that, under employment law, the ICC must allow Hair to serve the balance of his existing contract, but it would be no surprise if it washed its hands of him at the first opportunity.

His accusation of ball-tampering (in effect, cheating) has been shown to be such a drastic error of judgment that it calls into question the matter of his competence, and whether he's had it in for Pakistan all along.

But whatever the motives, his actions have embarrassed world cricket, made a laughing stock of the umpiring profession, and driven another wedge into the shaky relationship between the ICC's white and non-white members.

There are also a few sobering points arising from the minutes.

The first is that Hair should never again be referred to as one of the best umpires in the world. He has disqualified himself from that entitlement as surely as President George Bush has ruined his chances of being called a peacenik.

It's not good enough to claim that Hair is a good umpire because he makes his fair share of correct lbw and bat-pad decisions. Not when he makes a pig's ear of the most serious and far-reaching ones.

When you combine Ovalgate with Hair's decision to ignore ICC protocol and call Muttiah Muralitharan for throwing in 1995, it becomes clear that he is far from a team player.

Another pending issue is the power given to umpires.

They obviously should be stripped of the right to make an accusation of ball-tampering without any evidence of the offending.

To deem, as Hair did, that a ball has been tampered with, and then expect everyone to support your decision despite a lack of evidence, is naiveat best and arrogant and biased at worst.

Whatever happens now, it seems certain Hair will remain a liability to world cricket as long as he continues to wear the white coat and offer his own unique brand of adjudication.

For the sake of everyone - the ICC, the players, the member nations and the umpiring recruitment officers - it would be better if he faded quietly into the background and directed his energies into some other pastime.

Solitaire appeals as the most appropriate.