FIRST ARTICLE I HAVE READ WHICH PROVIDES DETAILS OF WHAT TOOK PLACE AT THE HEARING - A MUST READ.
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Sensible end to chaotic affair
By Simon Hughes
(Filed: 29/09/2006)
Ranjan Madugalle’s verdict at the Oval yesterday did not only declare Aug 20 a bad Hair day. It was also 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.
First things first. The ball. Was it tampered with? I first examined it in the London offices of the International Cricket Council’s lawyers, Olswang, two weeks ago. It was presented to me in a heavily taped up cardboard box containing much packaging. Deep inside was the ball, wrapped in clear plastic. It was handed delicately to me, as if it were a murder weapon, though I was not asked to wear white gloves.
It surprised me. After 56 overs on a dry, fourth-day Oval pitch, it was in pretty good condition. There were a number of small abrasions on the rough side fairly typical of normal wear and tear on a deteriorating Test pitch. The only thing that looked slightly suspicious was a number of slightly curved striations concentrated on one area. I concluded that those could have been man-made scratches, but there was no way I could be sure. There was no hard evidence of ball tampering.
At the hearing on Wednesday, I briefly took the witness seat to reiterate my uncertainties about the origin of the marks on the ball. This 5½ oz lump of leather was exhibit A in the Legends Lounge at the Oval, an L-shaped room decorated with pictures of the greats and used on match days as a sponsors’ bar.
The Pakistanis – Inzamam-ul-Haq, his interpreter and the board chairman, Shaharyar Khan – sat behind Mark Gay and his team from elite law firm DLA Piper down one side. The four umpires, the match referee and ICC personnel sat behind their defence counsel, Pushpinder Saini, down the other side, facing adjudicator Madugalle and his legal adviser, David Pannick, an eminent QC. Inzamam and Darrell Hair managed to avoid making eye contact at any point.
Hair was first to be called to sit in the hot seat. This was a separate table at the front, facing at right angles to Madugalle and the others. The ball was produced from its box and he indicated the indentations on the rough side that had not been there four overs earlier and which, he concluded,“could only be man-made”. He had shown it to the other umpire, Billy Doctrove, who was “quite surprised” at the marks. Crucially, though, Doctrove had suggested waiting a few more overs to try to identify a culprit before taking the matter further
Hair, however, argued that if Doctrove agreed that the marks looked irregular they should act. He said he told Inzamam: “We are changing the ball because its condition has been unfairly altered.” It emerged later that the Pakistan captain, whose English is not particularly good, either had not heard this or had not understood it. He later revealed that the first time he realised that they had been charged with ball tampering and docked five penalty runs was when he was watching the television in the dressing room at tea, more than an hour after the incident.
Under cross-examination from Gay, Hair gave a dignified and resolute defence of the umpires’ actions. A stickler for the laws of the game, he argued he couldn’t have acceded to a more cautious reaction to the state of the ball “because law 42.3 does not provide umpires condition for warning the players. We wouldn’t have been doing our job”.
Isn’t this an over-legalistic approach?" Gay inquired.
“You’d know all about legal approaches, Mr Gay,” Hair countered. There was a brief outburst of laughter.
It was the crux of the matter, though. Hair applied the law rigorously, as a traffic cop might when overtaken by a driver doing 72mph on the motorway. The problem was Hair was guessing, using the flimsiest evidence, as the cop might with no radar-gun reading. Fair enough, you’d say, if the bloke had shot past doing about 90. Nick him. But the marks on the ball were not blatant enough for the drastic measures Hair took. The laws of cricket are there to ensure the smooth running of the game, and therefore should be interpreted reasonably – it is why humans umpire the game rather than machines.
Hair would have been better emulating the umpires last year at the Oval, who warned the Surrey captain that they suspected ball tampering was going on before taking action a few overs later when it continued. Hair did not see it that way. Asked by Gay if he would act differently next time, he said: “Faced with those circumstances I would do the same again.”
The rest of Wednesday morning’s formalities revolved around the umpires showing solidarity, though Doug Cowie, the ICC’s umpires manager who was at the Oval that day, admitted that as soon as he saw the five penalty runs being awarded, he said: “Oh s***, there’s going to be some trouble now!” The match referee, Mike Procter, also revealed that during the post-tea protests by the Pakistanis he was so caught up behind the scenes in feverish attempts to restore play that he did not see the umpires remove the bails. “The first I knew the match had been awarded to England was when Darrell was having a shower in the umpire’s room,” he said.
Geoff Boycott arrived after a break for lunch and inevitably enlivened proceedings. He greeted Pakistan’s first speaker, Shaharyar Khan, to the witness desk with a cheery “Oopening the battin’! First and last time you’ll go in ahead of me!” and later delivered an impassioned and at times hectoring speech about the importance of the spirit of the game. "You don’t just put on a white coat and say, ‘I’m God, I’m in charge,’ " he said, “You’ve got to be a bit more humane.”
Boycott was adamant that there was nothing wrong with the ball, and stuck to his guns under cross-examination from Saini, warning: “He better not try and do some point-scoring or I’ll come back at him!” and had to be politely dissuaded by Pannick. “Why didn’t you ever bat like that, Boycs?” I asked at the break. “Aw, these days they’ve got covered wickets, big bats, small boundaries. I never had any of that,” he said.
Pakistan witnesses – Khan, coach Bob Woolmer and Inzamam through his interpreter – gave accounts of the scene in the dressing room which prevented play from continuing. Poor communication and pigheadedness on both sides exacerbated the situation. After their first sit-in, the Pakistanis claimed they were heading out to play but the umpires were coming off the field and shortly arrived at the dressing room back door. Woolmer let them in.
Accounts differed as to what was said next, but it wasn’t particularly civil. Hair apparently asked: “Are you coming out to play?” To which Inzamam replied: “Why did you change the ball?” Hair claims he then said: “We are returning to the field and if you don’t accompany us that will be deemed a refusal to play,” but the Pakistanis refute that and say they found Hair’s tone “brusque”, which caused further resentment.
By the time they had seen reason it was too late. There is no doubt that lighter handling of the situation, a captain more au fait with the laws and closer proximity of players’ and umpires’ dressing rooms (they are two floors apart and in a separate building at the Oval) would have brought about a different outcome.
During my evidence I produced two other balls for comparison – one that I’d deliberately and blatantly tampered with, another that was roughed up naturally by my bad bowling. “Not again!” Madugalle said, smirking.
Umpire John Hampshire was the last witness, and summed it all up by saying: “I find it incredible that this ball could cause so much controversy.” Impressively though Saini articulated the umpires’ stance, Madugalle and Pannick saw reason and sense and announced the decision that had been expected all along. “Another case, another verdict,” Saini said ruefully, before adding: “Actually, Inzamam is one of my favourite players.” When it comes to lawyers, they are a law unto themselves.
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2006/09/29/schugh29.xml&page=4