Sometimes being right is wrong.

No one else knows this better than Darrel Hair. In 1996, he was the first umpire in the world to actually call a bowler with around 200 test wickets for “throwing”. The whole of Asia called him racist. The Sri Lankan’s wanted to make sure he didn’t umpire in any of their future matches. Basically, Hair was considered a villain in Asia and an idiot in other parts of the cricketing world.

But, ask anyone in their sane mind with decent knowledge of cricket rules, and you’ll know why Darrel Hair was right. Murlidharan did “chuck” under the old rules of throwing. Then ICC actually decided to modify the throwing rule to accommodate people like Murli who actually had a deformed arm. But Darrel Hair was still the villain. I would say Darrell Hair’s decision has reduced the number of chuckers in international cricket. Nowadays, other umpires have the courage to report suspect actions; the ICC takes chucking seriously and punishes players who throw. Is it not fair to say that Darrell Hair started this whole trend? Ofcourse a Brett Lee here and a Shahid Afridi there get away scot-free for obvious reasons.


Now , Hair has moved on to his next controversy - ball tampering. Everyone knows ball tampering always happened in international cricket. Everyone knows who started this whole trend. But not a single umpire actually had the courage to punish a team for ball tampering. Darrell Hair suspected some cheating in the Pak Vs Eng test and penalized Pak five runs. Irrespective of whether Pak tampered with the ball or not, Inzamam ul-Haq diverted attention away from the actual issue by forfeiting the match. Why is Pak so obsessed with postponing the hearing? If they are that confident they didn’t tamper with the ball, why not confidently go through the hearing immediately? Hair might have ended his umpiring career with this strong reaction to some half-baked assumption that Pakistan tampered with the ball. But this incident is definitely going to reduce the amount of ball tampering that happens in international cricket. We have already seen that "just-a-talk with the captain" hasn't made any difference.

But will Darrell Hair continue to be the villain just because he used Murli and Pakistan as opposed to Bret Lee and England to make his point? Or is ICC going to amend the rules again to accommodate teams/cricketers that cheat?

Darrell Hair is never going to get the support of the media or the ICC or any of the cricketing boards, but all that is fine. The sad part is none of the umpires are coming out in front and supporting him. After all, Hair was right in Murli’s case and we still don't know if he is right or wrong in Pakistan's case. But is the ICC even trying hard enough to find that out...