AVIJIT GHOSH
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
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NEW DELHI: Umpires, like actors, can often be fitted into slots: Simon Taufel the consummate professional, Steve Bucknor the maverick, Billy Bowden the comedian. Many cricket lovers look at the unsmiling Darrell Hair as the no-nonsense umpire who ensures the game is played by the book at any cost.
It's a nice, cosy niche Hair has. For a string of stormy controversies notwithstanding, he has quite regularly found a place in the ICC elite panel of umpires. At a time when traditionalists often lament how chuckers get away, he has positioned himself as the gutsy Australian who unflinchingly calls a spade a spade.
Such grandstanding though has taken the focus off Hair's rather uninspiring record as an officiating umpire. The truth is that Hair has never been in the same class as a Taufel, an Aleem Dar, or even a Rudi Koertzen. One reason why the Pakistanis threw such a huge fit on Sunday is because they were consistently at the wrong end of Hair's erroneous judgment throughout the series against England. Time and again, Asian teams have expressed their displeasure with Hair. And yet they have often been saddled with the big Australian umpire. Thirty of his 76 Tests have involved sub-continental teams - 17 of them Pakistan. Sixty-eight of his 124 ODIs have involved teams from the sub-continent, and 35 of them have been Pakistan games.
Sub-continent cricketers feel that the 53-year-old Hair, who played club cricket in Sydney as a fast bowler, has applied the rulebook against them even at the risk of appearing ridiculous. Once Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq was given run out when he tried to get out of the way of a throw by Steve Harmison that hit the stumps. The Pakistanis felt, and perhaps rightly so, that Inzamam was taking evasive action and Hair should not have referred the decision to the third umpire.
Now it appears that Hair is beginning to believe that he owes no explanation to anybody. He never thought it necessary to explain to the Pakistanis, who had tampered with the ball and where. For him, the decision - whatever the reason behind it - was beyond scrutiny.
The truth though is that none of Sky TV's two dozen cameras captured anything remotely suspicious. And yet Hair, the leader of the two umpires, had no hesitation in awarding five penalty runs to England after inspecting the ball, thus declaring Pak guilty of ball tampering.
Back in 1995, Hair was at the centre of a storm after no-balling Muttiah Muralitharan for throwing. Then, Sri Lanka captain Arjuna Ranatunga almost had led his team away. It was possible for the match to be forfeited but better sense prevailed and the game resumed.
It could have been a similar scenario again. But this time Hair refused to turn up after Pakistan, till then smarting under the insult, relented to play. Clearly, while Hair has the experience of 76 umpiring Tests, he has little wisdom.
In these strife-torn times, when Muslim distrust of the Western world is at its peak, the Australian's by-the-book approach has created another example of perceived injustice.
