When a Match Becomes a Scandal, That’s Not Cricket

England and Pakistan were linked again in the headlines Monday, but for reasons far removed from any bomb plot. This time, the controversy, described as an “unprecedented cricket crisis,” involved sport.

It focused on the cricket farce Sunday in South London, when Pakistan refused to exit its dressing room for resumption of a match with England after the tea interval, reminding some that cricket incorporates a tea interval, not to mention a lunch break.

The incident saddled Pakistan with the first forfeiture in the 129-year history of Test cricket, the long form of the game that is played on the international level. And it left the losing team’s captain accused of “bringing the game into disrepute,” as if in what has been a markedly corrupt summer for sports, it hadn’t lost any capacity for disrepute.

“It was the day cricket spun out of control,” former cricketer Angus Fraser began Monday in the Independent newspaper.

“Cricket’s Darkest Hour,” chimed a nearby headline.

Cricket is played at something of a leisurely pace, with matches lasting six or more hours a day for up to five days, including the intervals for lunch and tea.

Although rivalries between countries are intense enough to have occasionally spawned diplomatic rage, the game is rather genteel -- polite even. Or at least it was until Sunday at the Kennington Oval, where began the afternoon confusion that became evening top-of-the-hour news.

At 2:30 p.m., during the fourth day of the five-day Test match, umpire Darrell Hair inspected a leather-covered ball after it had been in play 56 times.

That led him to converse with fellow umpire Billy Doctrove, whereupon Hair accused the Pakistanis of tampering with the ball and awarded five penalty runs to England, invoking Law 42, Paragraph 3, which forbids the scuffing of cricket balls for aerodynamic effect.

In American baseball, such allegations have inspired folklore. Pitchers for decades have been known to use nails, belt buckles and even hidden emery boards to cut, scuff or otherwise deface a ball in a way that might help them -- illegally -- fool batters. In cricket, such actions are scandalous, or, as the Independent termed it, “the most grievous act anyone can commit on a cricket pitch.”

Though stung by what they termed a slur, the Pakistanis played on for more than an hour, until bad light and the tea interval paused the match. They went to the dressing room “hurt and angry at a decision which left them feeling deeply aggrieved,” Shaharyar Khan, chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, told reporters.

Hair’s presence was central to the problem. The umpire had faced allegations of tilting against Asian teams before, including an accusation of “chucking,” an illegal throwing action, against Muttiah Muralitharan of Sri Lanka in 1995. Later, Hair autobiographically -- yes, cricket umpires write autobiographies -- termed Muralitharan’s actions as “diabolical.”

So, when tea time ended about 4:40 p.m., Pakistan did not begin.

According to the Daily Mirror, one player appeared on the team balcony, reading a newspaper.

Once Pakistan did not resume, Hair invoked Law 21 and another Paragraph 3, which requires a forfeiture by any side that either “concedes defeat or, in the opinion of umpires, refuses to play.”

Roughly 40 minutes later, the Pakistanis did emerge, but by then the umpires had picked up the equipment and departed, ruling the match forfeited.

Some 23,000 spectators coped with their puzzlement and the lack of announcements by booing, but won praise for impeccable behavior that spared the sport any hint of cricket hooliganism.

For cricket aficionados, the whole thing conjured 1987 in Faisalabad, Pakistan, when then-English captain Mike Gatting altercated with umpire Shakoor Rana, although Gatting kept his captaincy until succumbing to tabloid reports he emphatically denied about exploits with a barmaid.

The Faisalabad flap prompted a 13-year hiatus on England tours of Pakistan.

Still, since then, former empire and former colony have honed good cricket relations, and Pakistani officials stressed their misgivings lie not with England, only with Hair, and stated their intent to proceed with their current England tour. Representatives of the England & Wales Cricket Board, the Pakistan Cricket Board and the International Cricket Committee worked into Sunday night trying to resolve matters.

Pending a hearing, the ICC charged Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq with changing the ball condition and with the “disrepute” bugaboo, which led Pakistani officials to reconsider continuing their tour late Monday night.

The Pakistanis, plus several English cricket journalists who defended them, retorted that the ball in question already had been in play extensively, that 26 TV cameras on site picked up no evidence of tampering, and, mostly, that Hair was against them.

“Pakistan Wants Hair Cut,” went a Guardian headline, as Pakistan requested that none of their future matches feature the 53-year-old, 15-year veteran of international cricket.

Dawn, an English-language newspaper in Pakistan, wrote of Hair’s alleged “track record of poor decisions and sparking controversy involving Asian teams.”

English coverage of Hair’s biography often mentions his omission in 2002 from a list of eight elite international umpires, and that said omission stemmed from complaints from Asian countries.

Monday in the Guardian, former Pakistan batsman and current TV analyst Rameez Raja said, “The star of the show definitely was umpire Darrell Hair, but as a villain of the piece.... The pride of an entire people has been tarnished by his ludicrous and highly insensitive decision.”

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf even called cricket Chairman Khan to voice concern. And Khan, who had a long career as a diplomat, bemoaned “a very black day for cricket.”