During the fourth and final test match between Pakistan and England Darrel Hair accuses the pakis of ball tampering, orders the ball changed and awards england 5 bonus runs. Pakistan object to this and refuse to take to the field after the tea break. Hair then awards the match (which was being won by pakistan it seemed) to england by forfeit. Apparently Hair acted entirely within the laws of cricket.

Bad form by pakistan I say, but typical of Mr Ul-Haq.

Throughout their umpiring careers, Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove have been involved in a number of controversies. Cricinfo looks back at the moments that have put the two umpires in the limelight

Interesting read about all hairs f*** ups

^ like what you spastic? Like calling the chucker when everyone else was too scared to do it?

Hair is a great umpire and one of the only ones to stand up to the s*** that other umpires wont..

edit: i see no 'f*** ups' in that article. i see a lot of tough decisions that most umpires wouldn't have made because they would be scared of the reactions of players and fans. i also see a lot of people's opinions to his decisions, but not many 'f*** ups'.

last edited by taggs at 10:54:01 22/Aug/06

Don't blame the umpire for applying the laws of the game, Blame the fat-f*** inzy and his band of merry fags.

read everything else. the test series and one day series of aus vs sa in 94 was atrocious, those lbw decisions were completely wrong. not just ambiguous, but plain wrong.

i'm not biting to the murali one, because its been done to death and ive made my statements before about hair, especially to mr pot himself :)

Don Bradman was quoted as saying it was "the worst example of umpiring that [he had] witnessed, and against everything the game stands for."

Although, what does don know about cricket? Thats right, a f***load-more than you

last edited by Astroboy at 11:13:11 22/Aug/06

Agreed - those stumps in '94 must have been 3 foot wide and 6 foot high.

What did the Paki's think was going to happen by refusing to return to the field... The only problem is Hair, knowning the rule applied them... the Paki's not knowning the rules - or believing they are a law unto themselves, shot themselves in the proverbial foot.

the walkoff has been done before, and i dont believe has ever resulted in a forfeit, this was just the first application of the rule.

maybe they were hoping that they could prove a point (if in fact the tampering did not happen)

I don't think it was a walk-off - from what I understand they didn't return after a tea break or something as a protest against Hair. And apparently they weren't trying to forfeit, just make a statement.

But yes good on Hair for making the call. Takes a lot of balls to make decisions like those, knowing full well the rammifications of what might happen - you could safely say he wont umpire in Pakistan ever again (I think he is already blocked from Sri Lanka as it is?)

he wont umpire in Pakistan ever again

add it to the list

Is there any info about why he thought ball tampering was going on?

I think he thought that one side of the ball had been deliberatly scuffed up to assist with reverse swing.

Trog - check out baggygreen.com.au - there are a few articles there. Basically, one of the England batsmen got out to a ball that did some wild reverse swing, umpires inspected the seam and saw that it had been altered, changed the ball and gave England five runs. Apparently Hair had been watching the suspect polish the ball for a while and became suspicious.

i noticed murali came out and said he had no issue with Hair

i have to admit, i dont like Hair

i felt bad for Muralia getting called

i would like to know more about why Hair thought there was ball tampering, but the pakis have just totally handled it wrong

imran aint helping either, with his "little hitler" comments;

http://content-aus.cricinfo.com/australia/content/story/257308.html

The Oval became the scene of the first such forfeiture in 129 years of Test cricket as Pakistan refused to take the field following Hair's accusation of ball-tampering. Between lunch and tea on the fourth day, and following Alastair Cook's lbw dismissal to a delivery that showed a fair amount of reverse swing, Hair was seen intently looking at Mohammad Asif rub the ball against his trousers at mid-on. At the end of the 56th over, bowled by Danish Kaneria, Hair went over to Billy Doctrove and was seen pointing at the quarter seam. The fourth umpire, Trevor Jesty, then brought out a box of balls and the England batsmen, Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood, were allowed to choose the next one to be used, in accordance with the laws.

To confirm that this had been the umpires' decision to change the ball five runs were added to England's total, which umpire Hair signalled by patting his right hand to his left shoulder. Bad light stopped play soon after, and Pakistan refused to take to the field after tea in protest. What ensued was a chaotic two hours after which the day's play being abandoned without another ball being bowled.

http://content-aus.cricinfo.com/australia/content/story/257372.html

Even so, there seemed to be some confusion about the events of the afternoon, with Shahrayar claiming that the ball - 56 overs old - had been damaged by a spate of sixes from Kevin Pietersen that had bounced off the concrete. In fact, Pietersen only started hitting sixes after the ball had been changed.

So Hair felt the ball had been somehow roughed up on one side to help with reverse swing and pakistan claim it hadn't been done deliberately (but got their story a little confused).

the reason hair cannot officiate any sri lankan games is that he wrote a book stating that he would call murali again for no balls if he officiated him.

which is kinda stupid and gives a valid reason for him to be barred from umpiring in sri lanka games.


on the tampering note, i could not find any information yesterday arvo regarding it, but thats interesting, regarding the quarter seam. short of bottle caps, shoe spikes, its gotta be really hard for someone with just their hands and pants to be able to put that sort of damage on a ball though, unless they were worsening a degraded ball already?

Hair didn't umpire Sri Lanka again after 1995 till 2003, so he wasn't banned from umpiring Sri Lankan games, just avoided them or was made to avoid them I guess. (And he said he would call Murali again if he didn't improve his action, not that he'll flat out call him regardless. Of course if he needs to improve is a seperate debate.)

unless they were worsening a degraded ball already?

It was 56 overs old so it would be very second hand by that stage.

my balls last 1000 overs without needing to be swapped

ross5.jpg got replaced :(

my testicle is still tiled across teh bg on ross.ausgamers.com

Murali's action has been cleared by the ICC. Hair deciding otherwise is just insubordination and yes he's a good umpire but sometimes just gets it wrong like a lot of them do.

ya i have been watching this with much interest.

I saw Tung (i think it was tung, hello mate) refer to an article that supposedly listed a whole pile of Hair's past errors and could only find one that was actually clearly "his" error.

"Steve Dunne, the New Zealand umpire who stood with Hair at Melbourne in 1995, spilled the beans about his silence during the Murali throwing controversy. In his book, Alone in the Middle: An Umpire's Story, Dunne wrote: "There were many thoughts going through my mind. What do I do? Do I support Darrell Hair because he has called Muralitharan and do I call him as well? Or do I support what I believe, which was what we had discussed and decided at a conference in Coventry earlier this year?" That conference had decided in the case of a suspect action that the matter would be reported to the match referee who would have the action filmed and sent to the International Cricket Council."

His error therefore is not calling murali, it is procedural in how that should be handled

Clearly however, Hair's partner in the middle is some kind of referee'ing
"Mr Bean" with a list of errors like that :P



With respect to the Murali thing, i remember watching all of that and reading about it on the TV and thinking that if the umpire thinks its suspect and has big enough balls to actually make the call, good on him.

As to the fact that the ICC supposedly cleared him later... is that a good thing? Or were they just bowing to pressure or trying not to bring the game into disrepute etc

Lets face it, their (ICC) goal is money and the sub-continent is a big player / fan base not to keep friendly with.

As to the current saga with Pakistan... well they have a history of cheating and suspect play as i recall and they refused to come back to the pitch... good call by the ump imo

Tell them to take their grandstanding back to Pakistan and let their dodgy referees help them win a few more games :)

Just read this too sorry

"Ross Emerson, a Western Australian umpire who also called Muttiah Muralitharan for throwing and reported Pakistan for ball tampering, praised Hair for "having the balls to take action". "There have been a number of occasions when there has been a suggestion or an allegation that a ball has been tampered with but in the end most of the umpires don't want to do anything about it," he said in The Courier-Mail. "If you accuse the subcontinental sides of anything it becomes an international incident. It becomes country versus country and you are called a racist." "

http://content-aus.cricinfo.com/australia/content/story/257463.html

I don't see why it's such a big deal - if it's ball tampering, they should be able to put pictures of the ball up so everyone can see them, surely

The problem is a ball gets f***ed up at different rates/in different ways depending on the pitch, ground, how hard it is hit and where it is hit. To verify ball tampering you need to see someone doing it or compare the ball before and after, not just say here's the ball and here's where it was tampered.

ah ok I guess that makes sense; now that I think about it for longer than 1/16th of a nanosecond I remember closeups of the ball on TV and it looks like it has had the crap smacked out of it for some reason

ags, plenty of other bowlers have had to have their action corrected, due to chucking. its not a bringing the game into disrepute, its that murali's action is deceiving to the naked eye. On slow mo cameras, it shows that the elbow hardly straightens at all (well within the ICC limit) but its his wrist that does all the crazy bending and twisting, causing his immense spin.

But that aside, the subcontinent has had many players' actions corrected, as has south africa, zimbabwe, and other countries. so i dont think theres a huge amount of 'general consensus' that could sway an umpire one way or the other.

hair did the wrong thing at the time with regards to the calling of it, and generally with tampering you need to make a statement about what the player was doing. IE - he stood on it with his cricket spikes, or he used a bottle cap to score marks into it.

If darrel hair saw the player deliberately picking away at the ball, or roughing it up somehow, fine. but if theres no visual confirmation or evidence, then this could become a bit of a s***fight.

so i dont think theres a huge amount of 'general consensus' that could sway an umpire one way or the other

Ok, I've got to take exception to that. My dad (an Indian) always maintained that you have to play much better than the home team in the sub-continent because the crowds are so influential. The supporters are so fanatical that umpires are scared to make controversial calls against the home team so the majority of the time they get the benefit of the doubt. It may happen less so now, but when he was growing up there and even into the 80s it was rampant.

Edit: P.S. The move to completely independent umpires was partially brought about because of this.

last edited by Chakas at 11:24:46 24/Aug/06

interesting read from shahid afridi and his thoughts on ball tampering

Pakistan allrounder, Shahid Afridi, told TIMES NOW that you can't reverse swing the ball without tampering with it. These revelations came when Afridi was asked to explain Pakistan's dismal show in the One-day series against India early this year. Afridi said: "You have to tamper with the ball in order to make it swing. Pakistan didn't get the time to do so."

hmmm

http://cricket.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1913900.cms

okay ill pay that chakas, i didnt know you were a half cousin of mine :p

but yeah, i would like to think since the independant umpire situation it shouldnt be like that...

interesting read spook, i thought at first maybe it was a lost in translation thing, but his talk of how it is done and the way he wants it legalised is :/

The Pakistanis probably do it so much that they don't even think of it as "cheating" which may be why they got upset.

I think the article inadvertently highlights how hard it is for bowlers on the dead, batsman friendly pitches they make for 1-day cricket these days. The crowd likes to see big hitting and 300+ scores but it's killing bowlers that are anything short of exceptional. Ball tampering should not be acceptable, but the fact that it's got to the stage where people are suggesting it should be legal says more about flaws in the current system to me than anything else.

I remember a previous incident where the pakistani captain (correct me if im wrong) used a cough drop on the ball to make one side of the ball sticky and was caught on camera doing it lolol.

"You have to tamper with the ball in order to make it swing. Pakistan didn't get the time to do so."

If this is true, then the australians would like a word with Simon Jones from last years ashes. Reverse swing after 11 overs.

Ball tampering. That's as exciting as cricket gets.

I remember a previous incident where the pakistani captain (correct me if im wrong) used a cough drop on the ball to make one side of the ball sticky and was caught on camera doing it

I think the English did that.

If this is true, then the australians would like a word with Simon Jones from last years ashes. Reverse swing after 11 overs.

See above if correct (although the English conditions have always been conducive to reverse swing and they use different types of balls in different regions around the world and that plays a part).

if they tampered the ball, wouldn't it be visable on the tv footage?

didn't one of the england captains get caught ball tampering on camera and got the punt?

if they tampered the ball, wouldn't it be visable on the tv footage?

Yeah because i'm sure this is the first time pakistan has played with cameras pointed at them.

ok, this is just getting weird now

what is Hair up to?

I am prepared to retire/stand down/relinquish my position on the elite panel to take effect from 31st August 2006 on the following terms:

1. A one-off payment to compensate the loss of future earnings and retain a payment over the next four years which I believe would have been the best years I have to offer ICC and world umpiring.

This payment is be the sum of US $500,000 - details of which must be kept confidential by both parties. This sum to be paid directly into my account by 31st August 2006.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/5286994.stm

Yeh heard this on the radio... cricket is heading the way of Italian soccer!!#!#

He brings a bad name to cricket and to Australia.

f***er.

Hey guys, i demand a one-off payment of $500,000 for leaving this forum since the resultant lack of my world spamming services will hinder forum growth and future prosperity.

make it $0.50 and you have yourself a deal

Ok leave it in your mail box.