Hair brushed aside again

The paths of the Sri Lankan cricket team and Australian umpire Darrell Hair will be kept separate once more after the ICC decided to reassign their umpiring appointments for the quarter-finals of the ICC KnockOut.

This follows protests from the Sri Lankan camp when it was learned that Hair had been scheduled to stand in their quarter-final clash with Pakistan on Sunday. Sri Lanka qualified for the game after their victory over the West Indies yesterday, however the umpiring appointments for all matches prior to the semis had been announced a few weeks ago.

The Sri Lankan cricketing community have been up in arms about Hair since he called Muttiah Muralitharan for throwing in a Test match in 1995 - a decision that was not supported by subsequent reviews of Muralitharan's bowling action. In 1998, shortly before the Sri Lankans were due to tour Australia, a book written by Hair was published in which he discussed the throwing episode and a number of other acrimonious encounters with the Sri Lankan team in 1995-96. Complaints from the Sri Lankan board to the ICC, and then referred to the Australian Cricket Board, led to Hair standing down from umpiring any matches involving Sri Lanka on that tour.

Hair has not umpired a match involving a Sri Lankan team since the 1998 Commonwealth Games. Unconfirmed reports during last year's World Cup claimed that the umpiring draw was arranged so that Hair did not stand in any of Sri Lanka's group matches in that tournament.

Earlier this week BCCSL president Thilanga Sumathipala sent a letter of complaint to ICC chief executive David Richards, saying in part that "You may note that any violations of the principal of natural justice, bias or apparent bias will be strongly resisted by the BCCSL".

Reports from Colombo today indicate that Sumathipala received an assurance by telephone yesterday from ICC chairman Malcolm Gray that the umpires will be reassigned from the quarter-finals of the competition. The revised appointments are yet to be announced. Sumathipala is reported today as saying that he will pursue the matter further at the ICC executive board meeting in Nairobi on October 17 and 18, to ensure that Hair does not umpire Sri Lankan games in the future.

Despite the BCCSL's insistence at Hair's removal from the Pakistan-Sri Lanka game, the Pakistan Cricket Board appear to have had no such concerns. Newspaper reports from Karachi today quote PCB chairman Lt-Gen Tauqir Zia as saying that Pakistan had no problems with Hair supervising the game on October 8, and had "no plans to lodge a similar protest" to that of the Sri Lankans.