The Oval debacle
The decision of Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove to award England victory at The Oval has created a massive reaction.
Peter English
25-Feb-2013
Daily Telegraph
The decision of Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove to award England victory at The Oval has created a massive reaction.
Ted Corbett, writing in The Hindu, tries to track where it all began:
The whole affair began, according to tales sweeping the Oval ground, when an England and Wales Cricket Board official went to the umpires' dressing room in the morning and asked them to watch out for ball tampering by the Pakistan players.
Geoffrey Boycott, writing in The Daily Telegraph describes the events as “farcical and reflected little credit on the England and Wales Cricket Board or the International Cricket Council”.
The ICC must be blind or stupid not to have realised that there is history between Darrell Hair, the umpire who accused them of changing the nature of the ball, and Pakistan. There were mutterings after the Headingley Test that Pakistan didn't like Hair's attitude.
Mihir Bose, cricket historian, feels the attack on Inzy's 'izzat' (honour) was the final straw.
Inzamam is one of those Pakistanis who passionately believes that a man can lose everything he has, including his life - but not his izzat. For him, the manner in which Hair took the decision as much as the decision itself meant that Inzamam's personal izzat, and that of his beloved Pakistan, had been besmirched.
Derek Pringle, Daily Telegraph's cricket correspondent, says pride, principle and prejudice replaced runs, wickets and catches.
"Everyone who follows the game, and has its interests at heart, needs a full explanation now, not least from the umpires and match referee," writes Mike Selvey in The Guardian.
In the same paper Lawrence Booth writes how Hair’s future is in doubt.
Simon Barnes writes in The Times “a small judgment about a small infringement of the laws created a day of outrage, distress and fury”.
Pakistan were not accused of ball-tampering yesterday. They were judged and found guilty by the umpire, Darrell Hair, as they sought to halt England’s second-innings resurgence. This is a profoundly serious business in cricketing terms. It is not like calling a woman a tease. It is like calling her a whore. Well, there are women who are whores, but you’d better be bloody sure of your facts before making the accusation.
Ian Botham, writing in the Daily Mirror, blames ICC for the chaos that enveloped The Oval.
Kamran Abbasi, writing in the Dawn, the Pakistan daily, writes that Hair has a track record of poor decisions and sparking controversy in matches involving Asian teams and feels that Pakistan would have been as mightily offended if the umpire involved had not been Hair. .
The Sun's John Etheridge writes on how an 18-stone Aussie called Darrell Hair trampled his feet all over the name of cricket with an astonishing display of pig-headedness.
James Lawton says in The Independent “a Test match died at the Oval yesterday for a lack of trust between those who play cricket and those who administer it”.
The Telegraph, the Kolkata-based daily, tracks Sky Sports’ live coverage during the choatic unfolding of the events and records what the star commentators had to say. Click here to read.
Cricinfo’s coverage starts here.
Peter English is former Australasia editor of ESPNcricinfo