In ICC's court

An abscess that has been festering under the surface of international cricket has begun to break open its skin. This is the widespread perception amongst the players in the non-White cricket-playing countries that the International Cricket Council is biased in its approach, because it adopts differential standards of on-field behaviour by players. The latest fracas is over Umpire Darrell Hair accusing and convicting Pakistan of ball tampering without adducing any evidence""and it doesn't help Mr Hair's case that none of the TV cameras caught any guilty action. Pakistan protested by not coming out to play after the umpires had gone in. Mr Hair then called off the match and Pakistan forfeited a game that they were well poised to win. This has led to an avalanche of accusations and recrimination. Nothing captures it better than the suggestion that the Indian sub-continent, in opposing Mr Hair, is seeking to exercise its "economic hegemony".

That the ball looked scuffed is not in doubt. But whether it was because some Pakistan player had tampered with it""the correct way of putting it is "altered its condition"""is open to serious doubt. Mr Hair needed to prove it. He has chosen not to because, under the rules of the game, his word is final and he is not required to prove anything to anyone. On the field, his powers are absolute. It will be recalled that the same Mr Hair had called Mutthiah Muralitharan of Sri Lanka for chucking""even when he bowled a leg-break, something that is impossible. That was a decade ago, and far from removing the man from the umpires panel, the ICC has allowed him to carry on, which he has done and added a series of other controversial decisions.

The correct question to ask is not whether Mr Hair and other umpires are biased or incompetent. The correct question is how to correct umpiring errors. The ICC has been slow to move in this direction but, as we have seen in the case of line decisions, it has made some important changes that have improved the game. Essentially, the issue involves challenging the absolute nature of the umpire's authority by means that do not reduce his effectiveness. Technology is the obvious way to go, albeit in the case of things like ball-tampering it would be impossible to keep track of the ball constantly. Recognising this, the ICC had introduced a rule by which the fielding team had to deposit the ball with the umpire during every interval, and indeed even at the fall of a wicket. That is good but not good enough because it still does not address the issue of umpiring mistakes. In a general kind of way this is true of all human adjudication. The answer lies in a provision for appeal, as also very strong standards of proof. Technology provides the solution for certain types of mistakes, but not for other types. This is the problem that the ICC has to deal with, rather than standing on its prestige and allowing an unseemly slanging match that does no good to the game.