KEY POINTS:
There is hope for everybody - the umpire's word is no longer final. That is the only conclusion you can reach after the staggering decision made by the International Cricket Council (ICC) to reverse the result of the third test between Pakistan and England at The Oval in
2006.
That test, lest we forget, ended in forfeiture after Pakistan refused to take the field after tea on the fourth day because they had been penalised five runs by umpires Billy Doctrove and Darrell Hair for ball tampering.
That was the trigger for an unseemly series of events that saw an overnight offer to resume the test stymied by Hair; accusations of racism against the Australian; and his eventual suspension from the elite umpires' panel until he was re-admitted during the recent England-New Zealand series.
Hair's actions during the incident and in the immediate aftermath required scrutiny. Both teams wanted to carry on but he stood firm and said once the bails had been removed the game was over, an intransigence that did him little credit and what Imran Khan was referring to when he called him an "umpiring fundamentalist".
When he then wrote an email to ICC umpires' boss Doug Cowie offering to retire for a non-negotiable lump-sum payment of US$500,000 he looked less a fundamentalist than a rampant opportunist.
But that is by the bye.
What was never in question was that once all the parties, egos injured or otherwise, left The Oval for the final time in that series, the result was set in stone - England win by forfeit. The umpires said it must be so; the laws of this great game said it must be so.
But not according to the ICC, described in The Australian yesterday as "hopelessly compromised".
This is doing their readers a disservice; only by removing the word "compromised" and subtracting the "ly" from "hopelessly" can you grasp the true value of this "governing" body that finds itself unable to "govern" when it comes to the issue of Zimbabwe.
But it can, it seems, ensure that nobody shall lose a test if they refuse to play.
Michael Holding, the brilliant former fast bowler turned urbane commentator has resigned from the ICC cricket committee in protest.
"When you take certain actions, you must be quite happy to suffer the consequences," he said. "That game should never, ever be a draw. I have just written my letter of resignation because I cannot agree with what they've done."
For all the good it will do, Holding would have more chance of making a statement by holding a country to ransom, plunging its citizens into unimaginable poverty and subjecting them to random brutality. He should have one of his lackeys run cricket into the ground and siphon ICC monies into areas unknown...
On second thoughts, that would probably escape the ICC's attention too.
