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Hairgate, part 94

Reading the small print of Ranjan Madugalle's analysis of the mystery of the scratched ball, two lines stand out:

1. None of the four Umpires, nor the Match Referee, saw any tampering with the ball. Nor is there any video footage or other photographic evidence which shows any such conduct.
2. The witnesses do not suggest that the way the ball was playing establishes ball-tampering.

It has been well established that the umpires had possession of the ball after the fall of Alastair Cook's wicket and that it was only four overs, or 18 minutes, later that they raised concerns about the state of the ball. We should assume that they inspected the ball properly after Cook was dismissed and saw nothing untoward. Why, then, did they decide to re-examine the ball only four overs later if they neither saw anyone tamper with it nor detected any change in the way the ball was playing?

I suspect the umpires have been very careful with their evidence. They may have seen what looked like a player tampering with the ball, but not wanted directly to accuse someone when they knew that there was no TV evidence or even any clear-cut damage to the ball to back them up. Had they done so, this row could have turned even more nasty, with individual players suing for slander.

Remember the TV footage of Darrell Hair looking very closely at one of the Pakistan bowlers (I think it was Muhammad Asif) as he vigorously polished the ball. Recall too the way that Asif turned his back on Hair as he did it, knowing he was being watched. That in itself is no evidence for ball-tampering but it may have put doubt in Hair's mind.

Still, if Hair won't say what his reasons for changing the ball were, then he can hardly complain at Pakistani shouts of vindication. What this does show, however, is that Billy Doctrove, by some way the junior umpire in the middle, may have shown the greater maturity by advising Hair to wait a few overs and try to spot real evidence of tampering.

A good day to bury bad news

While all eyes were on the Oval this afternoon, the ECB saw it as a good moment to slip out a press release about Dominic Cork receiving a one-match suspended ban and a £1,500 fine (plus £1,000 costs) for swearing at a doping officer after the C&G Trophy final last month. Line and Length sees it as its duty that this story should not go unremarked.

Cork, you will recall, had batted for an hour and a half at Lord's, making 35 not out, in a valiant attempt to resurrect Lancashire's chase of a small Sussex total. When the last Lancashire wicket fell, and Sussex had won by 15 runs, Cork was understandably a bit emotional and not all that interested in urinating into a bottle.

I don't know how impolitely Cork told the doping officer that he wouldn't undergo the test, or where he told him to put his bottle, but surely a bit of leniency could have been observed. Cork's action will have been done in private and will not have brought the game into disrepute (I wasn't even aware that there had been a row until today). The ECB disciplinary panel was upset that no one in the Lancashire dressing-room had tried to defuse the situation. Can you blame them?

An acceptable fudge

So the verdict most people suspected has been reached by Ranjan Madugalle: there is no evidence of ball-tampering (note that Pakistan are not totally absolved of this: Madugalle simply said there was as much chance that the damage to the ball was done by normal wear and tear as by human intervention) and Inzamam brought the game into disrepute by refusing to play after tea. The punishment of missing the Champions Trophy is lenient enough for Inzamam not to appeal, and the final fudge to satisfy all sides is that Darrell Hair has been removed from the Champions Trophy ("for his own safety") but will continue as an elite umpire.

All done and dusted? Possibly, it all depends on whether the umpires keep their counsel (a future Hair autobiography after he retires could be interesting) and whether both sides accept the fudge - that Pakistan may not have cheated but the umpires were within their rights to suggest they did.

And what's the betting on Hair standing in the first game of the World Cup, West Indies v Pakistan?

How cricket can save the world

This is Anthony Albanese, a little-known Australian politician and the Shadow Environment Minister Down Under. I can't see anyone in David Cameron's Shadow Cabinet over here wearing an England rugby shirt, but Mr Albanese is a man who likes his sport and is keen on slipping it into debates. Such as this recent one on climate change:

"What Labor would do is cut Australia's greenhouse pollution by 60 per cent by 2050. We know that, if you have a target, it is like a one-day cricket target: you do not bat out the first 30 overs; you send out Adam Gilchrist to get some runs on the board early because it makes it easy to get to the target later on."

I confess that I don't spend my nights trawling the Canberra Hansard for quotes like that, it came via Rick Eyre's website. Albanese's point in a global context has merit - no point hanging around waiting for the spinners to come on when you've got a world cup to rescue - although he doesn't explain what environmentalists should do if they lose early wickets, or indeed how best to handle the power plays. And what about using Duckworth/Lewis in the event of rain? I don't think he has thought this one through properly. Wouldn't the best way to counter global warming be to stop all the hot air coming out of the ICC?

Cricket rarely mixes with politics, although famously John Major left office saying that he was off to the Oval for the rest of the day, and Margaret Thatcher was done for after Geoffrey Howe made his not very amusing gag about her being the captain who had broken her team's bats. At least, unlike in the English county game, Westminster has long been awash with top-quality spinners.

More than a Test player?

That Younis Khan is not just an excellent judge of which balls to leave and which to clobber to the extra cover boundary, he is also a fine judge of a quality bowler. Writing a column for Big Star Cricket, he pays compliments to Monty Panesar, who bowled him with what Younis says was "the ball of the series" at Headingley last month. But Younis goes on to express surprise that the Northamptonshire spinner is not in England's Champions Trophy squad, on the grounds that he can take wickets but rarely bowls a loose ball.

Now I know that I am a bit biased about Monty, captivated not only by those deep brown eyes and the Tiggerish zest for the game but also by the amount of dip and turn he gets on the ball, but I think Younis's argument is a bit flawed. All those doubts that Duncan Fletcher has about Panesar's fielding and batting (largely irrelevant in the longer game) will be amplified in one-day cricket. And Panesar's bowling is not all that hot in one-day games for Northants: 11 wickets in 11 matches (five of them in one game) at an economy rate of more than four an over.

I'm a firm believer in horses for courses. Jamie Dalrymple and Michael Yardy have so far been excellent spinners-cum-batsmen for England in one-day cricket. Keep Panesar's powder dry for the Ashes.

Tiddly pom

While the ICC bigwigs and their lawyers are wrangling over scratched balls and plots to stage a sit-in hatched over a fag in the showers, it is nice to read on Will Luke's Corridor blog that a bit of sanity has prevailed in the world of cricket: Australians are still allowed to abuse England fans. The term "pom" is not racist abuse and it will be allowed to rain down upon the Barmy Army this winter. Whether Australians can use the phrase "pommy bastard" is a grey area, as is the continued use of "Aussie convicts" by the Barmies in response.

Thank heavens for that. I feared that the ultra-PC lobby in the ICC were going to ban all freedom of expression, along with all alcohol purchased outside the ground, all instruments, flags and any other trappings that suggest that watching cricket is meant to be pleasurable.

Racism is, of course, a thoroughly unpleasant disease, but it is not as virulent in cricket as the ICC would claim. A few unsavoury incidents in the Australia v South Africa series apart, it has not been an issue, but now the ICC wants to turn it into one with an anti-racism code of conduct.

Why can this not just be left to the individual countries (or even the individual grounds) to police? Why should bureaucrats in Dubai know more about crowd control at, say, Headingley than Yorkshire CCC and the West Yorkshire Constabulary?

Among the odious elements in the new code, the ICC plans to "commission an eminent qualified lawyer" (gosh, you mean rather than some back-alley shyster with a mail-order degree?) "to draft legislation dealing with racist behavior at cricket matches". We already have legislation dealing with that in this country, surely? Isn't that what all those Sky programmes on ASBOs are about? Is the law of England not good enough for the ICC?

Then there is: "the adoption of a text message or telephone hotline at venues allowing spectators to report offensive behaviour in confidence". Fine, although surely the phalanxes of stewards that you get these days are meant to notice any offensive behaviour. But still, if the ICC wants to create an Orwellian culture of snitching on your neighbour then that is fine, as long as I can report any tribal and banal chanting that I find offensive. Or do crimes against civilisation not count?

Not to mention: "The holding of diversity days to emphasise the way cricket continues to break down barriers of race, colour, religion and culture." Cripes, can't we just concentrate on the cricket? If the ICC wants to make the game more multicultural might it not be a better idea to bring down ticket prices and allow fans to bring in flags, banners and instruments? The Oval used to be the most multicultural place to watch cricket, now you barely see a black face in there. They've been priced out and driven away by the bureaucrats. Still, a diversity day when they can come and eat jerk chicken and talk to the members (on a non-match day, obviously) will soften the blow of being unable to get tickets for next summer's Tests, won't it?

The finger of fate

As two Test umpires come under the spotlight at the Brit Oval today, with the ICC inquiry into the "Hairgate scandal", Line and Length brings a happier story about umpires. Meet the youngest man to stand in a first-class game...

THE mental pressure heaped on cricketers who shine in their teens and struggle in their twenties can be enough to make some send for the men in white coats to cart them away. For Michael Gough, however, an England A player as a 19-year-old in 1999, his collapse in form led to him throwing away his bat and donning the white coat himself. He went from being Marcus Trescothick's room-mate on tour to a first-class umpire in six and a half years.

Gough, pictured here playing for England Under-19, qualified for the ECB's reserve list of umpires three weeks before this season started and was the first umpire to give a Sri Lankan out this summer, in the game against British Universities at Fenner's. Yet at the age of 26 he was barely older than the students and younger than half the touring side. "All sports officials are getting younger," Gough said. "It is no longer for old guys in white jackets."

He is believed to be the youngest first-class umpire in the history of the game, a year younger than either David Constant, whose 38-year career ended last week, or the legendary interwar umpire, Frank Chester.

Back to the future

It is time for a bit of springautumn cleaning and a last chance to dust down those cricket features that got bumped out of the paper by some football competition in Germany. Today, meet Howard, England's long-serving scorer who picks the next generation of Ashes winners. Tomorrow, the youngest first-class umpire.

DARREN GOUGH had just scored a fifty against Australia and the first thing he did on leaving the field was to run to the scorer's hut to ask Howard Clayton for the evidence of his feat to wave under his coach's nose. Gough was only 19 but the amiable cockiness that is so well known in the Essex bowler and ballroom dancer today was already well-developed, Clayton recalls.

Clayton has been the scorer for England Under-19 since 1990 and has kept the books in 82 international matches. He has seen a whole generation of cricketers live out their lifespan from the pupa stage to retirement and believes that the present under-19 crop is the least experienced squad in terms of first-class cricket he has seen, which makes their close-fought series with a strong India side [which ended 1-0 last month] all the more worthy of praise.

Awards time

So farewell to 2006 as we head immediately into what the record books will call "2006-07". It has been an interesting summer. Not a classic one, but that was perhaps inevitable after last year, but still one packed with drama and, of course, controversy. The last rites will be read over the England v Pakistan series this week, while England's capitulation against Sri Lanka in the first Test series of the summer seems a disturbingly long time ago.

Sussex were clinical in winning the final game of the season, but any year in which the championship title comes down to the last match is clearly a good one. Congratulations, too, to Worcestershire for snatching the final promotion spot from Essex when I was out of the country and unable to grouse about it. All the papers will look back only at the two Test series when they do end-of-year reviews of the cricketing summer, so instead Line and Length is proud to announce our 2006 county awards:

The Darrell Hair award for race relations

Never mind simmering Islamochristian tension or even the fallout from Hairgate at the Oval, peace, love and tolerance were born again at Hove, also known as Lahore-on-Sea, after Mushtaq Ahmed, Rana Naved-ul-Hasan and Yasir Arafat did more than most to win Sussex the title, the C&G Trophy and, perhaps more important, Line and Length's title of Team of the Year.

The Steve McQueen award for a great escape

Worcestershire were bottom of the second division of the county championship after two matches, having lost heavily at home to Somerset and Derbyshire. Things did not look good when they travelled to the Oval for their next game and conceded 501 runs to Surrey's first innings. Rain threatened to spoil the game but Surrey gamely set Worcs 285 to win in 32 overs. Thanks to Phil Jaques's 107 off 69 balls they made it and the march towards promotion was under way.

All you need is Hove

As expected, Sussex have beaten Notts and wrapped up the county championship before lunch on the third day. The only disappointment is that Mushtaq Ahmed - by a long chalk Sussex's player of the season - could not finish this final innings with all ten wickets. He took the first six to fall before James Kirtley disappointingly snared Paul Franks leg-before. Mushy then took the last three wickets to finish with 9-48 and 13 wickets in the match.

Lancashire might bleat about rain having disrupted their title hopes - and how ironic that they should be thwarted again by rain this morning even on the South Coast - but Sussex have won so many games within three days that Lancs can hardly complain. Even if Hove had had as much rain as Old Trafford, it is likely that Mushy would have had enough time to win all the games.

Notts will be anxiously watching events at Headingley, where Durham have added 170 runs for their seventh wicket and are 38 runs away from reaching 400, securing maximum batting points and ensuring that, if their game with Yorkshire is drawn, Notts are relegated. In the other battle that matters, Essex will be delighted by news of rain this morning at Northampton where Worcestershire were already struggling.

I'll be away from this blog for a couple of days. I'm heading off to Dublin this afternoon where some golf competition is taking place, but please pop back and visit on Monday when I reveal Line and Length's awards of the season. And if you are a Sussex fan and want to crow, click on the comments button below and let us know what you think.