Ball Tampering

Although I started this blog to explore topics that my more traditional blog usually stays clear off, I did not realise that prophesy was one of my unusual talents, but so be it. Those who read my remarks on cricket and its place in Empires, their management and maintenance (Vol 5.) will rightly have found the events of last Sunday's Test Match between England and Pakistan as evidence of divine intervention.

As the clouds gathered on late Sunday afternoon Pakistan were bowling at an England team just starting to eat their way into the Pakistan total of somewhere, if memory serves, of four hundred and something. Around the world followers of cricket were glued to their short wave radios or Sky Sports as the duel between the old and new Empires fought itself to a nail biting conclusion. Would Pakistan's brilliant bowling conquer the barricades of England's last ditch batsmen? Would poor light stop play? Would reverse spin sniper its way through the English order or would the death or glory boys of the middle order carry the battle? The long afternoon was drawing its breath as a crowded oval watched each delivery and stroke with the anxiety born of long experience of the ability of the sport to subtly alter the space time continuum.

And then, shock horror, the (apparently) infamous Australian umpire, Daryl Hare, called over the Pakistan captain and showing him the cricket ball, told him that he believed it had been "tampered with" by his team, and that he was awarding England 5 penalty runs for the offence.

Tea was taken, but the Pakistanis, agrieved at Hare's decision, and at the insult (as they saw it to themselves, to their team and their nation) delayed their return to the pitch. Hare with his fellow umpire and the two England batsment went out. Hare aske the batsmen were they ready to play and they replied yes, whereupon, Pakistan not having appeared, Hare struck off one set of bails and deemed that Pakistan had forfeited the game.

The decision stood, even though a few minutes later the Pakistand team went on the field, only to return to the pavilion presumably bemused or incensed or simply, as were the rest of the planet unfamiliar with Rule 23(b) or some such. Within hours there was a full scale diplomatic incideng going on, with Pakistan's President telephoning his team to reassure them of his own and the country's full support. The ICC (apparently based in one of the Arab Gulf States!) has ridden ponderously into the fray and the result stands and the unfortunate Pakistani captain is being tried for high treason, or the usual "bringing the game into disrepute" charge that fossilised officialdom always wheels out when they are guarding a lost cause or a monumental cock up.

Now far be it from me to pontificate on a topic of which I know little and care less but just at the time when we need every last Pakistani on our side in the war against the lunatic mullahs, now is not the time to remember that Australian umpires with suspicious minds need personal members of the Diplomatic Corps at their elbow on Sunday afternoons at the Oval. Ball tampering is a very uncertain offence, even when a ball has not been bashed around the ground by all and sundry, and even more so when the individual, or individuals responsible cannot be caught actually tampering. There is a lot of history to this, both between the Pakistan team and Mr. Hare, and between him and the other sub-continent teams, so perhaps he was right, or wrong, or something in between, or perhaps it doesn't matter. In cricket, as so often in life, you have to make decisions and stick to them come whatever crap descends thereafter.

I don't wish to go any further into the byzantine complexities involved. Others have done that much more expertly than I. I was impressed by the quiet dignity of the senior Pakistani spokesman who was both reasonable and conciliatory. I was impressed by the dignity and composure of the England team and of the crowd; they had won the match but in such a way that left a bad taste in the mouth. At least the crowd got a partial refund.

And for the Pakistan team, if any of them ever read this, take comfort if you can in the ultimate ability of cricket to make sense of what now seems the most arrant nonsense. Sport and above all cricket is about more than triumph or failure :"We may lose or win, but we were here" to badly paraphrase the Eagles.