Pakistan Cricket: Umpire Alleges Ball Tampering: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow?

Cricketing history was made yesterday, but for all the wrong reasons. For the first time in 129 years of the game, a match was forfeited.

And forfeiture looked confusing, messy and ugly.

It had all the ingredients of a pot boiler, the plot consisting of two warring teams - one of them with a troubled history of countering allegations of ball tampering, a match poised thrillingly on the fourth day of the match, a battered ball, an umpire with a not so rosy past when it came to dealing with teams from a certain corner of the world, all of these culminating in the allegation that the ball had been tampered with, the team accused of the tampering refusing to come on the field and finally, the umpire dramatically flipping the bails off the wickets indicating that play had ended.

Questions are still swirling around the events of yesterday and it does not appear that satisfying answers will be available any time soon, if at all.

Did anyone actually tamper with the ball? If so, who? Reports indicate that none of the 26 cameras trained on the field have captured evidence of any of the Pakistani team members tampering with the ball. The umpires' report does not clearly state who did the tampering either or how.

How long did Pakistan mean to stay off the field? Bob Woolmer, the Pakistan coach, has indicated that the team meant to stay off the field for a few minutes to register their protest against the umpires' decision to award five runs to England on the tampering charge. But the minutes kept ticking away and the Pakistani team did not make an appearance on the field for close to an hour.

Does Hair's troubled history with sub-continental teams have anything to do with his role in this controversy? Of course, it is not prudent to judge a man by his past deeds, but is it any surprise that it is coloring these events? By the same token, so is Pakistan's prior involvement in ball tampering scandals.

What is the role of the umpires in a game? It has been reported that both teams were ready to resume play after the post-tea fiasco, but it was the umpires that held their ground and refused to continue. Could the situation have been handled better by the umpires?

Regardless of whether anyone obtains answers to these questions or not, events have been set in motion by the cricketing bodies and by Pakistan, and opinions rendered on this issue by the Who's Who of cricket.

In an article brilliantly titled Pakistan demands Hair cut, the Guardian reports, that Shaharyar Khan "insisted his country will never again play in a match that is umpired by Darrell Hair."

Imran Khan is quoted as saying, "The team was right to criticise the umpiring decision, but if I had been the captain, my prime objective would have been to squash England and win a handsome victory. Hair metamorphoses into a mini Hitler in the umpire's white coat."

Geoff Boycott questioned the wisdom of having Hair officiate in a game with Pakistan as one of the teams given their rocky history, while Nasser Hussain wondered at the lack of proof of tampering.

Come Friday, the technicalities may be laid to rest with the ICC scheduled to hold a hearing on the two issues before it, the ball tampering allegation and the allegation against Inzamam-ul-Haq that he "brought disrepute to the game" by keeping his team off the field.

But any expectation that the emotions surrounding this issue will be laid to rest is far from realistic.