What goes around comes around! The ‘Murali’ curse that gobbled Hair! Iqbal Latif- Below the caption “The way forward”, Hair wrote: “I am prepared to retire/stand down/relinquish my position on the elite panel to take effect from 31st August 2006.” He outlined his three conditions: a one-off payment of $500,000 to compensate for loss of future earnings over the next four years, with details to be kept confidential by both parties; a public explanation that retirement was a “lifestyle choice”; and no public comment to be made by the umpire. Dickie Bird is entirely right when he said that with the emergence of the emails, this controversy snowballed into an issue bigger than the Body Line series of 1932 that led to the near severing of diplomatic and trade ties between Aussies and England. In The Times, Christopher Martin-Jenkins wrote that ‘ICC’s decision to publish Hair’s offer plays into Pakistan hands’ which implies that the emails should have been hidden. Indeed Malcolm Speed admitted that one of the differing opinions he received, one was also to erase the email, tear the letter and forget about it. The incident did not play in Pakistan’s hand. What it actually did was to provide the final verdict on Hair, the character. A man who has business in mind when he takes his decisions. From Murali to the events at Oval, the controversies are created to make ground work for big money later. Hair’s autobiography entitled ‘The Decision Maker’ made money brashly on the back of his unilateral decisions on calling Murali’s bowling action “diabolical.” Imagine a judge, after being turned down by the appellate bench, goes on to make money on his myopic view of his victim’s perceived fault. Instead of offering a “one-off, non-negotiable” way out of the crisis, the question is why should Hair offer to resign and ask for money to do so? The revelation that the Australian official proposed walking away from the game in return for a secret deposit into his bank account has strengthened Pakistan’s view that Hair was biased against them in the decisions that led to their forfeiture of the Fourth Test against England at the Oval. Hair appears to be a man under extreme pressure to make money, if nothing else. When the whole world was engaged in controlling the fall-out from his intransigence and pigheadedness last Tuesday, he had been busy writing the postscript of the saga quietly by making a blatant blackmailing attempt to get as much as possible out of the unfortunate incident. Hair was tired of umpiring. He was looking for a crisis; he made one up and he wanted to get the maximum out of it. Once he made money the proposition, Hair’s case was finished. He has disgraced the institution. This is not the first time he has profited from his decisions. ICC looked the other way when he described Murali’s bowling action as ‘diabolical’ in a book that netted him lots of money. How can an arbitrator make money out of the cases he adjudicates? Imagine a Pakistani on an elite panel taking such liberties. These are the double standards ICC lives with. Is this a new definition of elastic justice? His love for money and cunning for creating controversy finally caught up with him. Picture a Pakistani like Aleem Dar wrongly accusing Aussies of ball tampering and then, after offering no evidence, forfeiting the game to the opponents and charging the ‘team captain’ a level three charge of bringing disrepute to the game. And once all that is accomplished and Aussies are penalized, pulverized, dejected and charged for showing dissent against a baseless accusation of cheating, Aleem Dar within the next 24 hours plans his strategy to make blood money on Aussies’ misfortunes. To rub salt in the wounds, in the next 48 hours, Aleem Dar in secret emails demands a million for his indiscretion. Had that been the case, Dar would have been burnt at the stakes in Australia. The way Hair has played his card is not cricket and all those lining up to safeguard him from Down Under need a reassessment of their loyalties to an Aussie who has turned out to be a wolf amongst the sheep. Aussies would have declared war on a nation whose umpire was so obsessed with material compensations after carpeting their nation’s pride. He called Pakistani team a cheat. An individual player cannot dissent against the umpire’s decision, he has to walk. But Inzi stayed back on the field after being arbitrarily charged for a crime that they had not committed that day. But during tea interval, he must have made sure that his players had not acted in a foolish or ghoulish manner with the ball. Once he was sure, he knew he could play the innings for national honor. He played his cards well; the honor of the nation is greater than the forfeiture of a test match. Hair’s bluff was called and he was caught with his pants down. It was entrapment from Inzi, not the other way around. A meek return to the field would have buried this tryst as a suspicious victory even if Pakistanis had won, and the showdown with Hair would not have been possible; he would not have been exposed; showing his monumental intransigence and the huge fat ego, he dug his own dollar-lined grave of greed and ravenousness. What goes around comes around. Hair was caught in his own web of conspiracy by the cleverness of the Pakistani team. They were not cheats. They exposed the greedy on the field. Inzi is subject to two charges, the second coming out of the first. The first is ball-tampering but no evidence has appeared so far. The second is that the umpire is the final word and the captain’s dissent has brought the game to disrepute. I was on the sidelines passing judgment. I thought his right to enforce has to be respected, and I also thought that Hair acted within the law but instead of evidence of tampering came the evidence of blood money. His entire career seems to be based on an unbridled love for quick wealth, and it looks like he thrives on the misfortunes of the players. In Golf and Tennis, Number Ones have their own territory; in cricket, the treatment accorded to number one is strange. Would any official dare to treat Tiger Woods or John McEnroe the way Hair treated Murali? A man who has no test wickets against his name was on the verge of virtually finishing Muralis career. Murali, who now proudly sits as M. Muralidaran, the world’s all time second highest wicket-taker. Institutions are bigger than mortals like him. However, when a nation’s honor is questioned, men react, just like Zidane’s head butt, whose origin’s honor over the ultimate World Cup prize was far greater. There is just so much abuse a human being can take; this is the man who gave Inzi the ‘out’ decision in the most bizarre of circumstances when he was evading the ball in total contrast to the rules of cricket. He follows selective rules and applies them harshly without consideration on the selection he makes. His employers were initially willing listeners in a secret exchange; they prodded him and decided to raise the ante by suggesting that ‘now that racism had been introduced’ he should reconsider the offer. The bombshell dropped on him and his painful critique in front of the entire world was a classic ICC tax haven-based bureaucracy deserting their most honest employee to save their own necks. There were only two ways for Malcolm Speed, either to share the information with PCB who would have gleefully gone public, or lie. Lying would entail destruction of the entire structure globally as we know it. “It took a while for the full ramifications [of the email] to sink in,” Speed told Sky Sports. “We held a number of meetings, and I obtained the best legal advice available. I was told that if there were potential issues between ICC and PCB, I’m legally obliged to display them. The other advice was to tear it up, delete the emails and lie about it. I wasn’t prepared to do that.” Hair’s contention in his letter was that the next four years “would have been the best years I have to offer ICC and world umpiring.” In April of this year, he had said he planned to finish international umpiring after the World Cup next spring. “I’m not so sure that after another 12 months I’ll have the passion to keep enjoying it.” What a nice way to end a career: quietly pocketing half a million upfront for five years of service for someone who was retiring in the next 12 months. It looks like this was a colossal way to make some quick money. Unable to prove the accusation of tampering even with the help of 26 cameras, he tried to make the best out of controversy. The best his lawyerly mind could do was to guide him in blackmailing his employers who were ready to go the extra mile to help him with all his allegations. He also knew how sympathetic some in the English media would be in calling Pakistanis a cheat. He calculated all that and showed his immense intransigence, fully sure that the next day’s papers would call him the great savior of the game. Little did he realize that his eagerness to write a strong script of his next book on the blood of an Asian team has two missing links. The first: that the team had not committed the crime; once sure in the tea room they called his bluff. Second, post Simon Jones, reverse swing is now considered an art, an art that earned the Ashes for England. So now, he is trapped; Pakistan stand vindicated at least on one count that reverse swing is a genuine delivery and it is an art that needs to be learned and understood, rather than punished. Above all, was it too much for Hair, who is said to be meticulous in his planning, to perfectly know the political tension surrounding Pakistan in terms of the 21 arrests of British Pakistanis? Did he grasp that cricket was building bridges between the moderates and encouraging the youth towards cohabitation far from the evil influence of Bakris and Qutoodas? Sajid destroying the Pakistani middle order batting to win the series brought a glimmer of hope in the dark alleys of Lumb-lane in Bradford. Did he not appreciate that he had to use kindness above rule of law? If he had allowed the game to continue, he would have been hailed as the savior, and Inzamam would have been the man to be cast as the guilty party. How far can a nation’s honor be dragged for the script of a great future bestseller?
Re: The 'Murali' curse that gobbled Hair!
mashallah, tht was gr8, well done!!:)
Re: The 'Murali' curse that gobbled Hair!
Brother, good start off with the first post. Please make paragraphs, that the points belong to. Format it by making paragraphs and nice and neat. It is complicated to read the entire page amongst huge one.