Hair-brained

I don't normally make fun of typos and slips in other people's copy, not least because there but for the grace of dog go I, but there were a glaring couple of mistakes that appeared in Michael Beloff's round-up of sport and the law in The Daily Telegraph yesterday. Near the end, he refers to "Australian umpire Darryl Hair" and his suit for race discrimination against the ICC which was abandoned, Beloff says, "after eight days of hearing".

It's bad enough that Beloff should get the spelling of Darrell wrong, but he is out by two days on the length of the trial, unless he is including the weekend, when the court did not sit. Play was abandoned first thing in the morning of the seventh day. A good sub-editor should have picked these mistakes up, but they are almost inexcusable given that Beloff was the QC who represented the ICC in that very trial. Or was eight days the number that he billed?

Incidentally, Hair has just completed a month-long Neuro-Linguistic Programming course for the ICC, which was part of the rehabilitation programme he had to undergo in exchange for dropping the lawsuit. It sounds like they are turning him into an emotionless cyborg, but they already have Simon Taufel for that. Apparently it has something to do with improving his flexibility and communications skills.

He will umpire a couple of Intercontinental Cup matches in Dubai next month and is due to be involved with the Under-19 World Cup in February, around the time that the ICC will decide whether to renew his contract and, presumably, allow him to stand in Tests again. With India and Sri Lanka saying they have no problem with Hair now that he has served his time, the only stumbling block to him being reinstated is Pakistan but I imagine they have rather more important things than cricket to concern them right now.