For the "Bahrain Tribune"
The repercussions of Sunday’s extraordinary events at The Oval will be felt in cricket for a long time. Tribune sports columnist Paddy Briggs was at the ground – here is his special report.
My seat at The Oval on Sunday was close to the off-field action as the extraordinary events unfolded - events which were to lead to the unprecedented forfeiture of the match by Pakistan. Whilst acres of newsprint will no doubt be covered around the cricket world in discussion of the controversy, and there will be differences of opinion as to who the heroes and villains were, to me the issue boils down to one cardinal principle. The Laws of Cricket state that “The umpires shall be the sole judges of fair and unfair play.” This is one of the shortest of all the laws and it is quite unequivocal. The preamble to the Laws adds that “The umpires are authorised to intervene in case of…tampering with the ball” and further that “It is against the Spirit of the Game…to dispute an umpire’s decision by word, action or gesture.” It is beyond argument, therefore, that the umpires at The Oval were within their rights in their actions in respect of what they saw as unfair play (ball tampering) and also that Pakistan was in serious contravention of the Laws (and their spirit) in the “protest” that they made.
At 4:40pm the umpires took the field after the rain break and the England batsmen were ready to resume, but the Pakistan side did not appear. Their dressing room door was closed, only to be opened from time to time to admit first their manager Zaheer Abbas and then their coach Bob Woolmer (neither of whom stayed in the room for very long). The umpires left the field and at that point there was a prima facie case that (as the Laws of cricket put it) there was “…action by any player or players [which] might constitute a refusal…to play”. The duty of the umpires in such circumstances is to “…ascertain the cause of the action [and] then decide together [if] this action does constitute a refusal to play” they then have to inform the captain and “if [he] persist in the action the umpires shall award the match [to the other team]”. So when at just before 5:00pm the umpires walked to the wicket again, this time accompanied by the two England batsmen, and for a second time (and despite the warning) the Pakistan team did not appear then the umpires were quite right to remove the bails, end the match and award it to England. And that should have been the end of the sorry matter.
The match was over at 5:00pm, the Laws and the spirit of the game had been upheld by the umpires and, sad though it all was, we should then all have gone home. But never underestimate the ability of cricket’s besuited officialdom to make bad situations immeasurably worse. Although the umpires had made their decision, and although it is undisputed that they have sole charge of the match, the Chairmen of the two cricket boards (David Morgan of the ECB and Shaharyar Khan of the PCB) took it upon themselves to get involved. I watched the two of them earnestly talking to one another outside the Pakistan dressing room and then each of them went in to talk to the Pakistan team. A little while later Shoaib Akhtar emerged and I asked him was what going on “They’re coming out” he said, and shortly afterwards out trooped Inzaman and his players (to a chorus of boos from the crowd).
The blatant and very public attempt by the two cricket Board chairman to undermine the decision that the umpires had made and try and get play restarted is perhaps the most shocking part of this whole sorry event. Remember these two men are not just the most senior cricket administrators in their respective countries, they are also both personally members of the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) executive board. To their great credit the umpires, Billy Doctrove and Darrell Hair, (both ICC employees, of course) refused to be intimidated and refused to be party to the squalid little deal that Morgan and Khan had brokered with the Pakistan team. It was the umpires’ entirely honourable decision not to stand in any restarted match which finally scuppered the match for good.
Passions are running very high at the moment and a period of calm would be welcome whilst the ICC looks closely at the whole affair (as they must). But it is important to state from the outset that, as in any sport, play can only happen if there is a framework of rules which delineate the limits of behaviour and which clearly decide who is in charge. The Laws of cricket certainly do this and these Laws are backed up by the ICC’s 8,700 word document “Standard Test Match Playing Conditions”. Reference to these Laws and conditions shows that the Pakistan team seriously contravened them in what they did (whether they had actually tampered with the ball or not) and that the umpires were wholly correct in their actions throughout. In this respect it is most regrettable that Shaharyar Khan should have made a disingenuous statement which defended the Pakistan team’s actions “We feel there is no evidence,” he said, “of deliberate scuffing of the ball. Once you accuse a team of deliberately tampering with the ball, it becomes a very big deal. We felt we should make a protest but we simply said that we would stay inside for a few minutes, and go out when the protest had been registered.” So a member of the Executive Board of the ICC is publicly endorsing an action by his players which has been in contravention of the Laws of the game and which has undoubtedly brought the game into disrepute! I wonder what his friends at the ICC will have to say about that. No very much, probably.
The root cause of Sunday’s Oval fiasco was a lack of proper leadership when it mattered most. Inzaman-Al-Haq should have said to his players “Look guys we are not happy about the ball-tampering allegations but the right time to progress this is after the match. Let’s get on and win it”. When he failed to do this Bob Woolmer or Zaheer Abbas or the ineffable Shaharyar Khan should have stepped in and said something similar. Instead there was vacillation and they all bowed to player power. Inzy has built a strong team with his distinctive brand of captaincy and it is quite clear that his players would do anything that he asked them. But it seems that in initiating the “protest” he put the rather arrogant conviction that he and his players had the moral high ground above common sense. And a match which could, and should, have ended with Pakistan (who played well throughout the game) gaining something from a series they had lost ends with them looking very foolish indeed.
