Hair and his effigies

For all that Darrell Hair is a fine umpire, his reinstatement will exacerbate racial divides within cricket's governing bodies, writes Barney Ronay in the Guardian:

... it seems that the ICC has taken this decision for pragmatic reasons. And possibly because it has little choice in the matter. Hair's ICC contract runs out this month. Without a robust legal reason for failing to renew it - and Hair was ranked the second best umpire in the world at the time of his last Test - it leaves itself open to a potentially disastrous unfair dismissal action. Hair's own racial discrimination claim was quietly dropped last year, a case presumably bolstered by the fact that his fellow umpire at the Oval, Billy Doctrove, received no censure.

The final point in all this is that Hair is a very good umpire. Currently there's a general perception of a talent vacuum at the very top and, at 55, Hair has a good few years left in him. All in all this might be an ideal moment to move into the portly Australian umpire flammable effigy business.