In the aftermath of the Code of Conduct hearing at The Oval, the media has gone into overdrive. While the decision came too late for the Australian papers, and most in Asia took agency reports, in the UK, there was no shortage of comment.
In The Independent, Angus Fraser reveals that he has actually seen the ball at the heart of the whole row:
The state of the ball surprised me. It was protected in bubble wrap and treated as though it was part of a murder investigation. My first impression was that there was not a great deal wrong with it. I expected there to be more. This was not a ball that was about to reverse swing - the phenomenon created by the type of ball-tampering the Pakistan side had been accused of - extravagantly. The seam and quarter seam were in as good a condition as you would expect from a ball that was 56 overs old. They had definitely not been tampered with. There was a contrast between the two sides of the ball, as there always is. This is because one side has sweat and spit put on to it and is polished, while the other is left alone. The darker side is the one that has been polished and it generally looks tidier, while the other side always appears rougher.
In The Daily Telegraph, Simon Hughes, who was one of the expert witnesses called to the hearing, said the conclusion was:
A victory for common sense, an entity that had been in short supply at that same venue a month earlier … it emerged during the hearing that that afternoon was one of allegation, obfuscation, provocation and indignation resulting in the forfeiture of a Test match. There was chaos behind the scenes in the pavilion after tea. At the very moment officials were indulging in desperate brinkmanship with the enraged Pakistanis, the on-field umpires were independently removing the bails to declare the match awarded to England. It is clear that, with a bit of discretion here and a deep breath there, this fiasco would never have come about.
In a column in the same paper which will infuriate those who back Pakistan’s indignation, Derek Pringle offers a different take on why Hair was appointed to so many Pakistan matches:
According to one umpiring source, he has warned them about suspected malpractice over the ball eight times in that period [four Test series in 14 months], so the Oval, despite the sketchy evidence, may have been a last straw. Perhaps the question the PCB need to ask themselves is why Hair, a stubborn but principled man, was given so many of their Tests to stand in? Could it have been that the ICC wanted the team's wilder excesses to be placed in check by an umpire bold enough to take on the players?
In The Guardian, Omar Waraich reveals that the evidence of Geoff Boycott played a key part in the outcome:
Boycott in particular delivered a veritable tour de force. At one point, he took the infamous match ball in his hand, held it up and said: "That's a good ball, not just a playable ball. Boycott also took exception to the idea that an accusation of cheating should be tolerated. "If me or any of my friends were ever called a cheat," he told the hearing, the accuser would be "decked with a bunch of fives".
Elsewhere in The Guardian, Mike Selvey suggests that Hair has been stitched up by the ICC and that he is effectively finished … and the excuse put forward for his omission from the Champions Trophy is risible:
To invoke grounds of safety and security, when he has received by all accounts a single cranky email and no other threat, is just an expedient way of keeping him out of the way. But the umpire himself has said that he has been given no assurances of any firm commitments beyond that, or even an indication that there would be any. He is in limbo, on gardening leave, technically employed but actually unemployable.
In The Times, Simon Barnes believes that Hair “stood on the authority of his office, but a changing world had moved on without him”. He continues:
My colleague, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, is concerned that insufficient respect for the umpire is a recipe for anarchy. With both respect and affection, I am inclined to disagree. I think that if the umpire gets too much authority, there will be occasions when the authority is abused.
In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain raised a question over a man who was at the heart of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans but who has somehow escaped almost unscathed – mathc referee Mike Procter:
Procter didn’t do his job properly … he sat there for five days worrying about small things like illegal logos, but when something major came up he did nothing about it.
Also in the Daily Mail, Mike Dickson is of the view that whatever the rights and wrongs of what Hair did, he has not been treated well by the ICC. At The Oval he faced the media without a lawyer sitting next to him, as Shaharyar Khan and Ranjan Madugalle had, and no other official involved at the match was asked to stand up to be counted:
Hair has been hung out to dry or cut adrift might be a more appropriate metaphor.
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