October 02, 2007	Tuesday	Ramazan 19, 1428

LONDON, Oct 1: Darrell Hair, the Australian umpire, was prevented from umpiring in top-level international cricket so as to appease non-white cricketing countries, it was claimed in the Central London Employment Tribunal here on Monday.

Hair is suing the International Cricket Council (ICC) for racial discrimination. Together with fellow umpire Billy Doctrove of the West Indies, he took a joint decision to penalise Pakistan for ball tampering on the fourth day of the fourth Test against England at The Oval in August last year. Pakistan then refused to take the field immediately after the tea break. By the time they were ready to play the umpires ruled they had forfeited the match – the first and so far only time this has happened in the now 130 years of Test cricket.

Hair, 55, says since taking that decision the ICC have caved into pressure, primarily from cricket’s Asian bloc (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh), which has seen him denied the chance to continue to stand in major international matches.

His lawyer Robert Griffiths, a member of the committee of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), told the tribunal that Malcolm Speed wanted fellow Australian Hair to continue to stand in Tests and One-Day Internationals, but Pakistan and India were opposed.

“So he remained on its Elite Panel but he has suffered both personally and financially,” Griffiths said. “The ICC bowed to the racially discriminatory pressure that was brought to bear on it by the Asian bloc and the ICC Board member countries. That has traumatised the world of cricket.

“The Asian bloc is dominant in cricket and sometimes it uses that dominance inappropriately. Everyone knows it, but most are afraid to say so,” claimed Griffiths.

“A fundamental issue is whether this was done to save Pakistan’s reputation and, or, to teach a lesson to a white Australian and any other umpires who dare take similar action.

“To discriminate against Mr Hair for upholding the Laws of Cricket and to justify this as being ‘in the interests of the game’ is a huge indictment of the ICC’s governance,” he added.

Griffiths also maintained that there had been a ‘Watergate’ style cover-up of an ICC Board meeting last November.

Part of a tape-recording of this meeting, attended by Sir John Anderson (New Zealand) Peter Chingoka (Zimbabwe) and Dr Nasim Ashraf (Pakistan) at which it was decided that Hair should not continue to umpire at the highest level, had gone missing, he said.

Earlier on Monday Hair refused to apologise as he took the ICC to court. Speaking before the start of the case Hair said the affair had made his life ‘hell’.

“My life has been turned upside down, but I make no apologies,” he told the BBC radio. “I didn’t forfeit the Test match. The laws provide for things under certain circumstances and I think it was pretty clear that one team was refusing to play.”—AFP