Racism raises its ugly Hair.

There is a new twist to the Darrell Hair incident. He is suing the ICC of discriminating against him on the basis of his race. First some background. Darrell Hair is an Australian and is one of the elite umpires employed by the ICC to officiate on international cricket matches. A few months back, he was officiating a match between Pakistan and England. In the midst of the match, he accused the Pakistan team of ball tampering. Inzimam Ul Haq, the then captain of the Pakistan team, got offended and decided not to take the field after the lunch break. That led to a showdown between Hair and Ul-Haq which eventually resulted in Pakistan forfeiting the match. As it turned out, there was no evidence of ball tampering.

Since then, the Pakistan Cricket Board appealed to the ICC to not select Hair to officiate in Pakistan cricket matches. The ICC Board (consisting of members from Pakistan, Zimbabwe and New Zealand) met some time later and decided not to select Hair to officiate on any other matches. There are many sources on the internet that describe this saga in great detail but here are some observations that are not usually made in the media:

Firstly, it can be easily established that Hair was biased against Pakistan - apparently he was not the only one. Another elite umpire Rudy Koertzen also seems to think that Pakistanis were cheaters and he let his opinions known to Hair. There is some evidence that Hair also had some back room conversations with Chris Broad (the match referee of the game in question) where Broad shared his "views" with Hair. All this may have raised Hair's suspicions. So with this mind set, Hair goes onto the field and accuses the Pakistan team but without any evidence. Further, he exacerbates the problem by not apologizing to the Pakistan captain after finding that the ball was not tampered with.

Secondly, to say that there was umpiring bias against Asian teams is to state the obvious. Everyone including non-Asians have made this observation. The only debate is whether this bias continues even now. Be that as it may, it is obvious from what has already been said that Hair was biased.

Thirdly, just for the record, many English, South African and Australian players have cheated in the game (Atherton and Cronje are two that come to mind right away). But to date, no umpire has accused the entire team of anything let alone ball tampering.

Lastly, an interesting dynamic in this whole saga is that many of the countries that were former "bosses" of cricket are ruing the fact that India is emerging as the "super-power" of world cricket. The former bosses of course are England and Australia.

So, even though on the face of it a white man suing an organization for discriminating against him on the basis of race could only be described as being Kafkaesque, with the preceding observations, we can start to make sense of Hair's actions vis-a-vis the law suit.

For one, Hair cannot fathom the fact that his bluff has been called. Further, it is clear that a lot of people in the establishment must be supporting him - I call these people the "Establishment Junta." It is obvious that they feel the power slipping from their hands and their tired old machinations of tipping the scales against Asian teams is coming to an end - the victim has woken up so to speak and he is not going to take it anymore. To digress a little, what is more than gratifying to see about the victim is the way he is wearing this new found power - proudly without a chip on the shoulder (to borrow a phrase from another observer of the sport whom I admire) - admittedly with a few notable exceptions. Thus, the establishment junta is bringing a law suit against the ICC is one of the first salvos in a battle that will be fought for a long time coming. The intent is clearly to scare the Asian countries into submission into towing the party line - rather not to disturb the power balance.

This conclusion is supported by the fact that Hair is not just accusing the ICC and Pakistan but the ICC and the entire Asian bloc. Interestingly, India the power-house of cricket has not been involved in this issue at all. So, why drag its name into the midst? Further, why is the New Zealand bloc or the Zimbabwean bloc (if there are even such things) not named since two out of the three board members involved in the decision to sack Hair were from these countries respectively.

I hope the ICC, even though it is still primarily run by the Establishment Junta, prevails in this case. I am actually dismayed that this case has come to trial (it should have been thrown out in the first place). It sets a dangerous precedent - any biased individual when faced with the consequences of his actions can claim discrimination. On the field, in the game of cricket, the umpire has a lot of power and there is room for abuse. The ICC did the right thing by curbing Hair's power when he abused it. In some ways this is a case of "too little too late." Many an umpire should have been banned from the sport and as we say in these parts of the world: "Good riddance to bad rubbish."