Just when you thought the cricketing world was just about getting back to normal again, things settling down nicely, England winning a couple of games, a thrilling series between Pakistan and South Africa under way, and the World Cup just around the corner, it felt like some of the controversies of last year, such as drugs bans and then first forfeiture of a game of cricket in 129 years had been conveniently forgotten, had been rightly swept under the carpet forgotten about. Well, Darrell Hair has put the kibosh on that by announcing that he’s now suing the ICC and …read more

Won’t this thing just die? In yet another twist, that is, after the ICC announced that they’d moreorless sacked Darrel Hair, and then said he was their second-best, he’s now been voted #1 Umpire in the World by Wisden, receiving 34% of the vote ahead of Simon Taufel with 16%.
Now, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the stats have been somewhat skewed by recent events, and that no doubt cynical non-Pakistani punters will undoubtedly have voted for Hair just for the heck of it.
But whether he is the number 1 umpire in the world, or more realistically number …read more

The argument over the Ovalgate continues to rage. Despite Pakistan getting their way and having Darrell Hair removed from International duty, they’re still unwilling to cough up the requested £800,000 in compensation for the forfeiture of the game. Instead, they’ve come up with a new plan: they’ll play cricket against us.

“We have told (ECB chairman) David Morgan that we are willing to play a one-dayer next summer in England and revenues earned from that game after deducting expenses can be taken as compensation.”

Admittedly, I don’t know how a profit share of International matches usually works but this idea of a …read more

Whilst the title of this post unfortunately forces unintentional thoughts of hairy arses, what’s more unfortunate is Darrell Hair’s removal from officiating in International matches. Well, unfortunate if you’re not Pakistani. No doubt the parties will go late in to the night in Pakistan tonight. The ICC spent 2 days discussing Hair, and finally came up with “We’ve lost confidence in him”, which in real words means “We don’t know what to do, but if we don’t do something, the brown stuff’s really going to hit the spinny-roundy thing.”
This is of course a total load of bollocks – Hair didn’t …read more

The inquiry in to the ball-tampering scandal gets underway at The Oval today, which will hopefully put this whole thing to bed. If you missed out on this whole affair then read my “as it happened” and then check out the BBC’s timeline.

Ahead of the The Ovalgate [s]Trial[/s] inquest that gets underway tomorrow, India have chipped in to muck things up a bit further, by requesting that Darrell Hair, the umpire at the center of the scandal, does not officiate at any matches in the forthcoming ICC Champions Trophy. Hair, who is already under scrutiny for offering to step down from the elite panel for a mere $0.5m and has yet to learn his fate, was confident of standing in the series. But with the general consensus being that everyone in the sub-continent flat out hates him, it was only a matter …read more