I'm backing Inzamam in this at this moment, nothing has been proven against pakistan and I reckon this is just another example of Darrell 'the dinosaur' Hair getting something horribly wrong again!

I agree props to Inzy, I mean fair enough I hear some experts say the umpires decsion is final BUT thats different when we are dealing with a LBW decsion or caught behind, you cant accuse some one or a team of cheating with no prrof which is at present what has happened!

Irrespective of the rights or wrongs of Hair's decision, Pakistan were wrong to protest in the way they did. There were many better ways of handling this and I wonder what the senior guys in the Pakistan dressing room were doing in the time between Hair's decision and tea (around an hour and 10 minutes). They had Woolmer, Waqar, team manager Zaheer Abbas and PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan and apart from Woolmer going to talk to Proctor, nobody else seemed to be doing anything. When the players came in for tea, they had no idea what to do.

What followed was ridiculous. Inzi later said that the team only agreed to go out to play after talks with the ECB and the match referee. At the same time, Shaharyar Khan was saying that there was never a question of not playing and they were only delaying going out by "a few minutes" to register a protest. One of them is obviously lying and I think its Shaharyar Khan.

What they could have done once the 5 runs were awarded was :
1) talk to the match referee (as Woolmer did)
2) talk to the 3rd and 4th umpires to see if they knew what was going on
3) check with Sky if they have any footage of any player tampering the ball
4) announce a press conference to be held 5 minutes before play is resumed after tea.

In the tea break :
1) talk to the players to find out what exactly happened on the field and check that no one has actually tampered with the ball
2) talk to the umpires to find out why they took that decision
3) in the press conference say "We categorically deny that any ball tampering has been done by any of our players. The umpires have made a huge mistake and we are shocked, outraged and offended by the acusation. We discussed the possibility of forfeiting this match as a protest against this discussion but we will continue to play under protest for the good of the game and for the fans."

After the game is over, hold another press conference and say "Before the tour, we made the ICC aware of our concerns about appointing Hair to umpire 2 matches. The sequence of events in the last couple of days has proved us right. We will be submitting a proposal to the ICC to avoid appointing Hair to any of our matches in the future and to consider removing him from the elite panel of ICC test umpires on grounds of incompetence."

That would have been just as strong a protest and Pakistan would have avoided losing sympathy with the cricket fans which is what has happened now.

I agree RT.

Now Woolmer is calling for pulling the rule and allowing players to modify the ball as they wish... as long as it's not with a foreign object to the field.
So, he's saying... It's okay to cheat. We do it, they probably do it, so legalize it and it's no longer cheating.

What a bunch of garbage. It's probably the WORST time for him to take this position since it all but admits they did tamper with the ball. You've gotta wonder who's running the PR/Decision section for the Pakistan team. They need to be fired, ASAP.

I can only laugh at the stupidity of it all. If you have to make a statement like that, make it after the ICC hearing, after the controversy has died down a bit and even then make it privately to the ICC and its other members, not in a public interview. What on earth was he thinking ?
This is just going to raise doubts in everybody's mind, which weren't there before, about whether Pakistan really are as innocent as they've made themselves out to be.

That was possibly one of the worst things Bob Woolmer could have said.

It has to be said that Pakistan certainly know how to bend the rules one way or another, and they have cheated England a fair few times in the past, for instance the Shakoor Rana affair in the 1980's, and Shahid Afridi doing a tap-dance on the pitch in this winters tour!

Also Pakistan have been guilty of ball tampering before.

All that said though, I still back Pakistans decision. Clearly they want to see the end of Darrell Hair in the international game, and to be honest I think they are doing the game a favour if they succeed. The fact the guy tried to get out of it all by accepting $500,000 to quit says a lot for the mans integrity.

Pakistan had already lost the series, had they just let the ball-tampering punishment go then nothing would have been made of it, they had to do something drastic and they did. As yet no evidence against Pakistan has been produced, and this after Sky Sports looked through the tapes of their 20+ cameras around the ground and evidently found nothing.



By the way RT, I think most neutral cricket fans still back Pakistan's decision in their heart of hearts. And anyway, it's not about being popular sometimes on a point of principle like this, but being RIGHT!

I agree with this in principle. I think where you and I differ is that I don't believe what Pakistan did was right. I think they were right to protest but the nature of the protest was wrong.

I see what you are gettng at. But I think Pakistan though (right IMO) that the whole affair would be swept under the carpet had they not done something as drastic as they did. Hair is a bully, but now it looks like he's met his match spectacularly