A Hairy Situation

It's the longest tea-break in the history of cricket. England and Pakistan went in for tea on Sunday, and they still haven't restarted play. Of course the match has long since been declared a forfeit. You know this if you follow cricket at all. Even my father in New Jersey read about it in the New York Times.

Cricket is always full of drama, but things have really gone over the top now. We have a charge of ball-tampering, which would not have had much impact on the course of the match if it had not been viewed as an attack on the character of the Pakistani team. Pakistani President Musharraf went so far as to say it was an insult to his nation. There is still a drama yet to unfold when the ball in question is finally revealed to the public after investigation. But one thing is certain: Pakistan did not come out to play after tea, and that's not cricket.

In the meantime there's been a lot of talk about the instigator of this charge of ball-tampering, the Australian umpire Darrell Hair. Is he a racist, as some claim? I don't know. I find such a claim without solid evidence to be more outrageous than a charge of ball tampering. Is he an authoritarian? There are certainly many, not just in Pakistan, who think so. This is not the first time he's been at the center of controversy. Incidents like this turn the focus on him instad of the sport, which is a bad thing. He will no doubt sell more copies of his autobiography as a result of this, but perhaps he's just an umpire who sees no room for compromise in the rules.

In the meantime, it looks like a cooling-off arrangement has been made to save the ODI series. This is of crucial interest to me, as I have tickets and various travel bookings to see the first ODI next week. They made up some lame excuse about a match referee having a sick relative so that Inzamam's hearing and possible punishment could be postponed. Bravo! Hopefully tempers will cool and international cricket will become its normal soap opera self again.

Next summer I hope to come back to see another match in England - hopefully India. I'm kind of hoping that Hair is not one of the umpires on the field. On that trip I expect to see this allegedly tampered ball for myself in a glass case in the Lords museum where it belongs.