What a balls-up

Inzamam ul-Haq and the Pakistan team were furious over the ball-tampering allegation. Picture / Reuters

It was British fighter pilot Sir Douglas Bader who once said: "Rules are for the obedience of fools, and for the guidance of wise men."

For someone who died 24 years ago, his comments seemed to take on even more significance this week after the historic forfeiture at the Oval, when one umpire's hardline stance left a cricketing community divided; a nation enraged.

Depending on how you see it, Darrell Hair's decision to penalise the Pakistan team for ball tampering, and to award the test to England after the tourists downed tools, was either the action of an inspired, courageous Australian, or the blunderings of a fundamentalist with no feeling for the game.

Whatever the view, the uneasy feeling remains that this day of infamy could so easily have been avoided, but for Hair's apparent intransigence on two counts, and the complete ineptness of the match referee, Mike Proctor.

In the first place, it's difficult to imagine why Hair, without any concrete evidence of tampering beyond his own opinion, didn't simply have the ball replaced without alleging any wrongdoing, and leave the matter in the hands of Proctor.

It might not have sat comfortably with Hair's straight-shooting and slightly gung-ho reputation, but it would have satisfied the principles of fair play at the time without going to the extreme of calling someone a cheat.

That option however, didn't seem to fit into Hair's rules of engagement at the Oval, and the upshot was that he soon found himself with a sit-in on his hands, leading to an even bigger crisis, and an even more bloody-minded decision.

It's not the first time that he has opted for a warning shot between the eyes.

When Hair first courted controversy in 1995, calling Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan seven times for throwing, he deliberately chose to fly in the face of the ICC guidelines, which recommended reporting suspect actions to the match referee.

That's why his partner, New Zealand umpire Steve Dunne, refused to join in on the ambush.

No one can argue that Hair wasn't within his rights to make both calls at the Oval this week, or that he was wasn't well intentioned on both scores, believing only that the game should be played to the letter of the law.

For all that, Bader seems to have a point when he suggests the need to acknowledge a bigger picture; one that can allow for rules and laws being bent or broken for all the right reasons.

Hair's options at the Oval were manifold.

Only he can explain why he took the path of extreme confrontation, knowing he also had the power to repair; to do something that would help cricket to be played, rather than hindering it.

Which brings us to the role of Proctor, and his apparent ineffectiveness in either detecting the escalating blue, or putting in place some measures that might have saved the game from being called off.

Quite why, after watching Hair penalise the Pakistanis five runs for ball tampering shortly before tea, Proctor didn't immediately set up a frank discourse in his office to ensure that the excesses of emotion were contained, is anyone's guess.

It seemed quite obvious from the footage that the tourists were livid about the ball-tampering accusation, and it shouldn't have taken much to imagine their mood when they made it to the dressing room.

Another disappointing feature of the issue is how it's being debated, and the amount of enthusiastic but misguided energy that's being wasted on fatuous and irrelevant nonsense - like whether Hair is racist, or whether he invented the charge maliciously.

With every controversy of this size, there are always questions that cut to the core of the matter, and others that feed on the emotional claptrap - and the past few days have seen a surfeit of the latter.

With that in mind, let's accept once and for all that Hair was well-intentioned, that skipper Inzamam ul-Haq deserves everything he gets in relation to the sit-in charge, and that Pakistan have, over the years, bent the rules no more than any other team.

To steal a line from John Cleese, this is just stating the bleeding obvious, and should seem apparent to all but the most parochial Pakistan fan, or the most colonial of Hair supporters.

The one issue that isn't so clear, however, is the ball-tampering charge, and on this matter rests the possible one-day series against England, and even the threat of a High Court injunction should Pakistan cop the maximum.

It still seems staggering that, without any black-and-white evidence to support the charge, and without really needing to go out on a limb, Hair chose a course of action that eventually left himself and world cricket exposed.

Wherever you look, the overriding question seems to be, why?

Well, maybe Bader has the answer.

Billy Doctrove

Age: 51
Tests: 9
ODIs: 53

* May 2002, West Indies v India: Makes the first gaffe in a head-shaking career when, as the television umpire, he gets a straight forward run-out decision wrong, ruling non-striker Carl Hooper not out when replays clearly proved he was. Hooper, on 15, continues on to score 115 and India lose.

* June 2002, West Indies v New Zealand, Kingston: NZ skipper Stephen Fleming complains to match referee Wasim Raja about umpiring incompetence after Doctrove prevents Paul Hitchcock from bowling the final over, insisting he has already bowled his allotment. Fleming throws the ball to Daryl Tuffey, who has been smashed for 33 off four. West Indies win, Doctrove later admits the mistake and acknowledges the scoreboard was wrong.

* May 2006, West Indies v India, Kingston: Doctrove vanishes into the crowd to fix a sightscreen problem without informing his partner, and the one-dayer continues without him. His absence coincides with a run-out appeal against Brian Lara. When the fieldsmen turn to square-leg, they are astonished to discover no umpire. A few moments later he returns. TV replays show Lara has made his ground.

* May 2006, West Indies v India, Antigua: Single-handedly causes a rule change at ICC level when, as TV umpire he deliberates for more than 15 minutes over a disputed catch. At issue is whether West Indian Daren Ganga stepped on the boundary rope while effecting a catch. The vacuum is soon filled by an unseemly quarrel between the players and on-field officials. Days later, the ICC deems the benefit of the doubt in similar circumstances should go to the fieldsman.

Darrell Hair

Age: 53
Tests: 76
ODIs: 124

* December 1995, Australia v Sri Lanka, Melbourne: No-balls Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan seven times for throwing, despite a new ICC protocol that advises umpires to report suspect actions to the match referee. His fellow-referee, Steve Dunne, from New Zealand, sticks to the guidelines.

* November 1998: Publishes his autobiography, Decision Maker, in which he describes Murali's action as diabolical and threatens to call him again if his action doesn't improve. His views draw the ire of the Sri Lankan Board of Control and eventually the ICC. As a result he is not included on the ICC's first elite umpiring panel, and does not officiate in another test involving Sri Lanka until 2003.

* September 2000, Zimbabwe v New Zealand, Bulawayo: No balls South African Grant Flower three times for throwing. Flower's bowling action is later passed as legitimate.

* January 2004, New Zealand v Pakistan, Wellington: A change of tack. Hair, with New Zealander Billy Bowden, opts to report Pakistan seamer Shabbir Ahmed to the ICC, rather than following his usual method of calling him on the spot. This time the ICC agrees, and Shabbir is forced to undergo rehabilitation.

* November 2004: Hair tells the ICC that he'll no longer accept appointments in Zimbabwe.

* August, 2006, England v Pakistan, The Oval: Hair deems Pakistan have been guilty of tampering with the ball despite not seeing any offending. Penalises Pakistan five runs. Later calls Pakistan's bluff when the aggrieved players stage a dressing-room sit-in. In what becomes the first forfeiture in 129 years of tests history, he awards the match to England.

A decade of ball-tampering scandals

1993-94
South Africa's bowlers are accused of ball-tampering by Australia and appear to be condemned by photographic evidence. No action is taken and they escape scot-free.

1994
England captain Michael Atherton is cleared of ball-tampering, but fined £3000 for misleading match referee Peter Burge over the dirt-in-the-pocket controversy. The matter was initially raised by observations from commentator Richie Benaud.

1994
Cricket heads to the High Court after Ian Botham and Allan Lamb accuse Pakistan of ball-tampering, and Imran Khan responds by suggesting that their claims are racially motivated. The English pair sue the Pakistan skipper for libel, and eventually lose their action in 1996. Court costs run into several hundred thousand pounds.

2000
Waqar Younis is docked half of his match fee and banned for one match, and Azhar Mahmood fined a third of his match fee, after New Zealand match referee John Reid levels ball-tampering charges in a one-dayer at Colombo.

2001
Match referee Mike Denness finds Indian star Sachin Tendulkar guilty of "acting of the match ball" while bowling a few part-timers on the third day of the second test at Port Elizabeth. Tendulkar is hit with a one-match suspended ban and fined 75 per cent of his match fee.

2002
A new five-run penalty for ball-tampering is added to the ICC's code of conduct, allowing umpires to penalise a fielding side five runs for altering or attempting to alter the condition of the ball.

2002
Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar escapes with a severe reprimand after being found guilty of ball-tampering against Zimbabwe.

2003
Shoaib is caught red-handed again, this time during a one-dayer against New Zealand in Sri Lanka. He is fined three-quarters of his match fee and banned for two ODIs, including the tri-series final which New Zealand won.

2004
One of cricket's most honest faces, India's Rahul Dravid, is charged after TV cameras show him taking a cough lozenge from his mouth and rubbing it on the shiny side of the ball during a one-dayer against Zimbabwe at the Gabba. Match referee Clive Lloyd rejects India's defence that the action is accidental. Dravid is fined half of his match fee.