WELL let’s face it, cricket had to do something to get itself on the back pages again. There we were, muddling towards this winter’s Ashes series, with everyone forgetting why they had got so worked up about the last one. In steps grumpy old man Darrell Hair (below right), and suddenly cricket is the most exciting sport in the world again.

Say what you like about Hair’s decision to bring the fourth Test between England and Pakistan to a premature end, sparking an international row about ball-tampering and placing the forthcoming one-day series in doubt, but it has given cricket a massive publicity boost just in time.
Consider this: It was England’s final Test match before the Ashes gets under way in November, the series had already been decided, Pakistan seemed to be ambling to victory in a match no one was really bothered about, and cricket seemed to have resumed its place as a game which filled the sports pages on days when there were no Intertoto Cup ties or transfer stories about Nicolas Anelka.
Cricket needed something to force it to the top of the sports agenda again; and my God did Darrell Hair achieve that. As a result, Pakistan became the first team in 129 years to forfeit a Test match. Whether Pakistan were guilty of ball-tampering is something that the International Cricket Council have still to decide. Thanks to his outrageously officious performance in removing the bails at the Brit Oval on Sunday, Hair’s future as a top-class international umpire must also be in doubt.
As the dispute spews out an increasingly bizarre series of accusations and counter-accusations – with England coach Duncan Fletcher the latest to be embroiled in the controversy – it’s fascinating to see how our red-top tabloids have managed to bring the Second World War into it.
Yes, former Pakistan captain Imran Khan gave them a helping hand by describing Hair as “one of those characters who, when he wears a white umpire’s coat, metamorphoses into a mini-Hitler”. The Sun and the Mirror, however, decided to dispense with the ‘mini’ and upgrade him to ‘Hair Hitler’ in their headlines. A clever pun, if you like that sort of thing, but let’s just analyse that in more detail, shall we?
Now I’m no expert on world history, but I think Hitler’s crimes were a tad more serious than penalising a cricket team five runs for alleged ball-tampering and then abandoning the match when they failed to show after tea. Still, always nice to see the most notorious mass murderer of the 20th century compared to an over-officious cricket umpire for the sake of a pun.
Meanwhile, a cricket match which had absolutely nothing riding on it continues to make the front pages as well as the back. Darrell Hair has made a complete fool of himself, but in doing so, he may just have done cricket a favour.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 at 9:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.