Hair withdraws lawsuit: analysis

Darrell Hair is unlikely to end up bankrupt after withdrawing his case against the ICC for racial discrimination this morning. Under employment laws, he will not have to pay the ICC's substantial costs and while his own QC, Robert Griffiths, and the legal team at Finers Stephens Innocent were not working on a "no win, no fee" basis, they are all cricket lovers and the fees charged were, I understand, reasonably sympathetic to the umpire whose Test career may resume in March once he has fulfilled a "rehabilitation programme" with the ICC.

The ICC, meanwhile, will just have to grin and bear the cost of flying their management team, lawyers and witnesses across to London from Dubai or other parts of the world and putting them up for two weeks in the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington - "the hotel England stayed in when they won the 1966 World Cup" one said. It is likely to have cost a bit more than the $500,000 that Hair had originally sought in return for his retirement a year ago and perhaps it would have been wiser to have bought him off then.

At least they did not have to pay for a witness who never arrived, as Hair's team did to their cost when Billy Doctrove, who stood with him in the abandoned Test at the Oval last year, decided not to take a flight from Dominica to give evidence last week.

For as long as he wants a job with the ICC, Hair will not be allowed to sell his story or even to speak to the media about this trial. He must be on his best and most diplomatic behaviour for the next few months if he wants to return to umpiring Tests in March after a period of rehabilitation. Even then, his future at the top level is in doubt after the amount of dirty linen that he washed in court. Rudi Koertzen is unlikely to have been grateful that his friend and colleague revealed his claim about Pakistan being cheats, for instance.

Hair left court yesterday with only a smile and an admission that he was relieved it was over. He and Amanda, his British wife, will be flying back to Australia in the next few days. Griffiths, flamboyant to the last, told the Press that he hoped they would be along to see his next case and promised to send out a fixture list.

Hair was never in this for the money, anyway, although he had prepared a Schedule of Loss that estimated that he would lose about £1.7 million in future earnings if his contract were not renewed at the end of March next year. The most that he could win in damages if his suit for racial discrimination had won would be about £25,000.

His main aim was to embarrass the ICC board members who had denied him employment and to force them to admit publicly that he is a good umpire. This he largely got as one grey suit followed another to say that Hair was among the best three umpires in the world, even if he was wanting in tact and diplomacy sometimes. The ICC has suffered substantial embarrassment during the case, not least for the lack of cricketing knowledge of some of the board members. One may have expected the West Indies representative, Keith Gordon, to be aware that Doctrove is a West Indian, for example, or for Sir John Anderson, of New Zealand, to remember that Ray Illingworth had been long retired by the mid-1980s.

Quite what the rehabilitation programme will involve is unclear. It will be co-ordinated by Doug Cowie, the ICC umpires manager, and David Richardson, the general manager, and Hair's readmission to top-level cricket will then depend on being approved by the same ICC board that suspended him. The board members need to swallow their pride over this and admit that Hair has served his time and would be an asset to the world game.

Several ICC men had said that he was suspended because they feared "the same thing [abandoning a match] could happen at the World Cup". Given the manifold failings of that tournament, not least the poor quality of umpiring in the final, perhaps the ICC may reflect that it needs an umpire whose knowledge of cricket's laws and regulations is watertight, even if his application can be inflexible.

Much will depend on whether Malcolm Speed and the ICC management can soothe the rage of Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka. Perhaps Speed was already embarking on a charm offensive when he chose to wear a Pakistan Cricket Board tie to the final day of the hearing. He claimed it went with the shirt, but on such small matters as diplomatic tailoring could the future of Darrell Hair's career lie.

Comments

[Patrick Kidd]

Dear Jonathan,
Thanks for your post on my blog. I may be talking a load of rubbish but I have it on legal advice that the most Darrell Hair could win for damages in a racial discrimination case is £25,000 (in fact as it has not been severe or persistent it would be more like £15,000). That may be more than he would have got under another case, but it hardly seems like a large enough amount to make it worth paying for a lawyer. I really do not think money was the main motivation. Of course, if you know different then please correct me

Patrick

[Peter McGuinness]

A quick note of thanks for your excellent coverage of this case Patrick. It has been by far the best available anywhere, printed or electronic.

The question remains: What the hell has all this been about? No one - ever - has doubted Hair's knowledge of the rules. This includes his calling of Murali 10 years ago. People forget that it was umpire Emerson who called Murali when he bowled a legspinner, not Hair.

Considering Hair was one of zillions of people worldwide who thought that Murali threw at the time, it is flippant to call him a cheat or a racist just because he was calling the game as he saw it. Okay, the ICC have fine tuned the rules and now says Murali doesn't throw. Fair enough. End of story.

As for the forfeited game fiasco - did, or did not Hair and Doctrove umpire the game to the letter of the law? Seems to me that the ICC sided with players who said they didn't like Hair, or thought he was biased.

Dear God, there wouldn't be an umpire left on the panel if it was a popularity contest run by the players or public opinion!

If Umpire Hair or any other umpire was ever proven to be biased or otherwise prejudiced in his adjudications, then he should be thrown out of the game permanently.

The fact that many people do not like Darrell Hair does not make him a bad umpire, a cheat or a racist. Does it? I honestly don't know.

Anyway, this was a tricky story, well covered.

I'm left wondering why all the hullabaloo in the first place? I'm not siding with anyone because the whole affair seems so pointless and over dramatised going all the way back to the ill-fated game.

[Amanda Spalding (AKA Mrs, Hair)]

Patrick,

Having left rather abruptly today, I felt that I should inform your readers that my pink sunglasses have been returned to their former glory with a new frame, and that the piink is only on the inside!!

I knew it was going to be a good day today when entering the tube I found a wasp nestling down the front of my blouse (obvioulsy looked like a cozy place to spend the winter)and when I pulled it out it stung me on the finger. Clearly things could only get better.

Cheers,

Amanda

[Jonathan Kelly]

The journalist is talking a load of rubbish.

The very reason that the case was brought under Racial Discrimination rules was precisely because the Compensation level is much greater that under other employment rules.