Saturday, August 26, 2006

The International Cricket Council announced on Friday that controversial Australian umpire Darrell Hair has offered to resign from the ICC Elite Umpires Panel with effect from 31st August if he is paid a sum U.S $500,000 to do so. Hair is currently involved in a dispute with the Pakistan side after he penalised them for ball-tampering during their Test against England at the Oval. The Pakistan team subsequently refused to come out of the pavilion, resulting in their forfeiting the match to the home side. The issue soon snowballed and both the Pakistani captain Inzamam-ul-Haq and Hair came under criticism, the former for bringing the sport into disrepute and the umpire for his alleged bias against players from the Subcontinent.

The ICC’s chief executive Malcolm Speed told a press conference that copies of Hair’s letter had been forwarded to both Doug Cowie (the Council’s umpire manager) and the Pakistan Cricket Board. The umpire asks, in his letter, for “a one-off payment to compensate for the loss of future earnings and retainer payments over the next four years, which I believe would have been the best years I have to offer ICC and world umpiring.” Speed, however, said that neither he nor David Richardson (the ICC’s General Manager) believed that the episode was motivated by any “dishonest, underhand or malicious intent.” on Darrell’s part. He also expressed surprise at the contents of the letter and that he felt the issue had been “marked by a series of unfortunate and entirely avoidable overreactions.”.