The Pakistan cricket team is accused of ball tampering by the umpire and hence cheating. They refuse to come out to play for the post tea session.

Darrel Hair takes off the bails from the stumps and according to the rules, as Pakistan didn’t come out to play, the umpires could technically forfeit the game and award it to England. A bit later, the Pakistan team came out to play but the umpires refused to officiate.

More than thirty minutes passed in the above stated ludicrious events. If a player or team is accused of cheating, he doesn’t become a cheat necessarily. Appeals can be lodged and strong statements by boycotting if not heard properly can be made later on. By refusing to play and cuasing commotion when there wasn’t need for it, the Pakistani cricket team did not see the larger picture of the responsibility of letting the show go on. The personal issue was given more importance than the good of the game at large.

That Darrel Hair was the umpire did not help matters. He prefers donning the hat of a police man in the middle, showing his importance. The good umpires, an old adage goes, are the ones who are noticed the least. Darrel Hair doesn’t believe in this adage and likes to be in the centre of every thing. He ignored the larger picture, not for the first time - the good of the game is vital above every thing else.

The fans who came to watch the cricket at The Oval on a Sunday chosing cricket over football or the ones who decided to watch on TV were left with the mockery for more than an hour. That is 2/3rds of the time it takes to finish a football match. That the crowd behaved calmly is complementary. The watching public, sponsors and the television companies are within their rights to get back their money for the day as the cricket, for which they paid, didn’t actually occur for 15-20% of the day for circumstances which could have been controlled.

Damage control needs to be done and the test match should continue tomorrow. If the egos of the men involved is so big that they cannot talk it out and the match is called off, it would disgraceful for the game. The persons involved in effecting the disgrace should be penalised but you would be a fool to bet that the ICC will do that.

Update: The test match has been forfeited and awarded to England.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 20th, 2006 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Cricket. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.