Getting inside the Hair crust

THEY'RE looking for Darrell Hair in Scotland as they do the Loch Ness. He's gone to ground but to be sure he's got a room with a view. And I just wonder if it's A View to a Kill. He may not have the suaveness of Bond, more the conceit of Blofeld actually, but it just might be that he's got the same grit. Like Bond, he's sitting in for a game of poker, and if there's one thing anyone will believe about Hair, it's that he won't let on what he's thinking.

Some have accused him of racism, but there have been stories of his run in with white players. He once gave an lbw decision against Gary Kirsten that the Proteas couldn't believe. It made Hansie Cronje grimace and sent the South Africans fuming at the umpire. Hair it seems is not the one to forget a grudge.

I was covering their 2003 tour to Pakistan, and heard the story that Hair almost succeeded in getting Pollock suspended from the next ODI. It appears that Pollock had said something in lighter vein to him on the field and Hair took it as an insult and reported him to match referee.

In 1992-93 at Adelaide he gave Craig McDermott out caught behind which gave the West Indies victory by one run and helped them square the series.

To call him a racist, therefore, would be misunderstanding the character.

I know the type. They thrive on confrontation. They are like Clint Eastwood in his Dirty Harry movies ('Go ahead, make my Day.'). They are the people who like the Blues Brothers are on a mission from God. They belong on the TV serial Dark Justice, the hero of which is a young judge who hunts down criminals in his spare time that lawyers have managed to free from his court.

This belief is probably behind his act at The Oval. He must have believed that sudden swing of the ball was a direct consequence of Pakistan's past liaisons with the ball. That was enough for him. He would beat the players at their own game. The law said he had the right to change the ball. The word 'evidence' was missing from law 42.3. The 26 cameras were no threat to him.

He had showed this disdain for technology previously. Five years ago, he gave Steve Waugh run out for 90 without calling for the assistance from the third umpire. Ten more runs would have given Waugh his 28th Test century, which would have left him one behind Don Bradman and one above Allan Border and, at that time, Sachin Tendulkar.

Waugh stood his ground in protest, perhaps angry that Hair had not bothered to check what was a close call. But Hair looked away. Waugh was eventually fined half his match fee and ICC even then didn't get what this man is all about.

But then Hair had been allowed to get away with bending the rules. In the famous no-balling of Muttiah Muralitharan, he was standing at the bowler's end from where an umpire cannot rule if the bowler is throwing.

In his book Time to Declare, former Australian captain Mark Taylor recalling the incident wrote: Hair was standing back from the stumps to get a clear look at Murali's action (before no-balling him) and when the Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga switched Murali to the other end, however, Hair's fellow umpire New Zealander Steve Dunne failed to call him. I understand that Hair had then asked Dunne to move back and watch the bowler's action from behind. Dunne declined saying it was a shame. I don't think umpires should gang up on a player.

At tea Hair (reportedly) told Ranatunga that if he kept bowling Murali, he would call him from square leg. Having had enough, Ranatunga took the spinner off.

Hair had overruled not just the ICC's clearance of Murali but also his own country's top biomechanics laboratory that had absolved the Sri Lankan. And how portentous can a man be when he did not rue his decision even when Sir Donald Bradman stated that it was the "worst example of umpiring that [he had] witnessed, and against everything the game stands for." And added "Clearly Murali does not throw the ball."

As a blog contributor noted: Bradman made a very valid point i.e. that Hair called Murali from the non-strikers end not from square leg... no umpire can call chucking from non-strikers end without at least input from square leg ump... and square leg ump said he didn't see chucking...

But well after Sir Don's scathing criticism of his decision, Hair wrote in his book that he would call Murali again. If this man goes against the views of the most respected cricketer in the world and his fellow countryman, there is a bee somewhere in him that is in fact colour blind.

Hair sees his role in the middle as Robocop, the implementer of rules. He doesn't realize that he is there also to advise and counsel, to ensure that the game is carried on in good spirits. That this is an era of management supervision where you get work done by giving respect and talking through the problem, not by dictating and demanding respect through the fear factor.

He is from the boarding school generation, where the headmaster's cane was thought to groom the leaders of tomorrow. He has been the Rip Van Winkle of cricket except that he has woken up not after 20 years but 60, and can't understand how, and why, the world has changed.